# astro: oops? apropos of rapid expansion of trajectories, the nomadic escape propensity of Titan.

As a vision of a fuzzy snooker, << decades of measurements and calculations have revealed that Titan's orbit around Saturn is expanding- meaning, the moon is getting farther and farther away from the planet- at a rate about 100 times faster than expected. The research suggests that Titan was born much closer to Saturn and migrated out to its current distance of 1.2 million kilometers (about 746,000 miles) over 4.5 billion years. >>

<< Titan is expected to gravitationally squeeze Saturn with a particular frequency that makes the planet oscillate strongly, similarly to how swinging your legs on a swing with the right timing can drive you higher and higher. This process of tidal forcing is called resonance locking. Fuller (Jim Fuller) proposed that the high amplitude of Saturn's oscillation would dissipate a lot of energy, which in turn would cause Titan to migrate outward away from the planet at a faster rate than previously thought. >>

<< The resonance locking theory can apply to many astrophysical systems. I'm now doing some theoretical work to see if the same physics can happen in binary star systems, or exoplanet systems, >> Jim Fuller.

Lori Dajose. Titan is migrating away from Saturn 100 times faster than previously predicted. Jun 8, 2020.

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-titan-migrating-saturn-faster-previously.html

Valery Lainey, Luis Gomez Casajus, et al. Resonance locking in giant planets indicated by the rapid orbital expansion of Titan. Nat Astron. doi: 10.1038/ s41550-020-1120-5. Jun 8, 2020.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1120-5   

Also (quasi-stochastic poetry)

1648b - tenuta di rigo della sonda. Notes. Jan 15, 2005.

https://inkpi.blogspot.com/2005/01/1648b-tenuta-di-rigo-della-sonda.html