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Astronomy

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Jan 1, 2026 – Jun 8, 2026

Mean-motion resonances: Q1 and Q2 of 2026

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Evgeny Smirnov

1 papers in this digest · 2026

Last updated Jun 8, 2026

Introduction

The first half of 2026 leaned heavily toward transport and delivery. Guido & Efthymiopoulos map the heteroclinic "arches of chaos" routing small bodies through the first-order Jovian MMRs; Deam et al. and Wang et al. both lean on the ν6 / 3:1J pipeline to explain Earth impactors and Kamo'oalewa's main-belt origin respectively; and Guo et al. trace 2024 YR4 dust into the 3:1 after its 2032 flyby. Fernández's belt-depletion estimate and Araujo's review sit underneath all of this as the broader bookkeeping.

The standout result, for me, is Pluto refusing to stay in its lane — twice. Ramírez-Vargas et al. find the entire simulated Twotino population caught in a mutual 4:3 with Pluto, and Muñoz-Gutiérrez et al. independently flag Pluto's outsized, "non-obvious" grip on the 2:1 leakage rate. Two papers, two different resonances, same body punching above its mass.

On the analytic side, Guardia, Kaloshin et al. give a genuinely rigorous account of stochastic diffusion near the 3:1, Capuzzo-Dolcetta extends resonant Hamiltonian dynamics to finite-mass perturbers (with a bistability threshold for circumbinary cases), and Dogkas & Vartolomei push proper elements inside libration zones. Li's atlas beyond 50 au is worth opening just for the 3:8-over-3:7 number reversal.

Exoplanets and the LSST run-up round it out: Batygin & Morbidelli argue Kepler-36's 7:6 demands long-range migration, while Spencer et al. (SBDynT) and Fleming et al. (Hilda yield forecast) are quietly getting the field ready for the catalog flood to come.

As usual, this is a curated cut, not a complete one. The order and the verdicts are ours. :)

1

Arches of chaos, heteroclinic connections of first-order MMRs and the chaotic transport of small bodies in the Sun-Jupiter system(pdf)

Guido, Alessia Francesca, Efthymiopoulos, Christos · 2026

The paper characterizes chaotic transport in the Sun–Jupiter planar restricted three-body problem via heteroclinic connections among stable/unstable manifolds of unstable periodic orbits tied to key first-order mean-motion resonances (MMRs). By explicitly computing manifolds for the 2:1 and 3:2 interior MMRs and the 2:3 exterior MMR, and relating them to FLI “ridges,” it explains the observed “arches of chaos” in (a,e) as the phase-space imprint of a chaotic saddle. The resulting heteroclinic channels allow resonance-hopping trajectories and, for Tisserand parameter T<3, facilitate transits between exterior and interior Jupiter-crossing regions, with implications for quasi-Hildas and Jupiter-family comet-like pathways.