Re: OT: alien radio signals

On 27/11/2024 15:25, Phil Hobbs wrote:

Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

Ultimately in the very long term it is thought that for three (or more)
bodies in general three of them will get close enough together at some
point that the smallest one gets expelled and the others will end up
more tightly bound together. Ovenden's conjecture also AFAIK still
unproven is that the gravitational dynamics will perturb their orbits in
such a way as to put off the evil day for as long as possible.
>
I can't find anything suitable online but it seemed like a very
reasonable way to explain Bode's law from first principles and the same
locked resonance patterns seen in other planetary moons. This is the
closest I've been able to dig up. Ovenden's conjecture gets and
honourable mention in A.E. Roy's 1970's book "Orbital Motion".
>
This comes closest:
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/115/3/296/2603818

 Michael Ovenden was my celestial mechanics and galactic dynamics prof at
UBC. A great guy, whose hobby was teaching New Age workshops at Cold
Mountain Institute. (An odd name for a small barge floating in the harbor,
but I digress.)
 Died pretty young, unfortunately.

Yes before retirement - it was a shame. Do you remember the title of his paper making this conjecture that I am struggling to recall? I'm guessing it had a more anodyne name at the time of publication with Ovenden's conjecture what A.E. Roy called it later in his 1970's book.
We had Donald Lynden Bell and Martin Rees for astrophysics.
--
Martin Brown