I watched this from start to finish in one sitting --- unput-downable! He just slipped this in briefly towards the end, but it seemed potentially significant to me: in a dust cloud, dissipation causes (non-escaping) particles to congregate in stable "torus" islands. If I've undertood this correctly, it implies that once a system of two massive bodies has been established, then the formation of a (coarsely) determined planetary system is guaranteed within a relatively small timescale. Or maybe this is already well-known, and I just hadn't caught up ... Fred Lunnon On 1/23/13, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:

FYI -- Talks about zero/low energy orbit transfers, potential Earth-colliding asteroids, ability of Mars ejecta to reach Earth, etc.

The Interplanetary Transport Network: Mapping Chaotic Motion Through the Solar System, November 2008. Zurich Physics Colloquium.

Shane Ross

55 minutes, 144MB download

http://www2.esm.vt.edu/~sdross/movies/ross-zurich-2008.mov

Free book on this topic:

Dynamical Systems, the Three-Body Problem and Space Mission Design

W.S. Koon, M.W. Lo, J.E. Marsden and S.D. Ross

Free online Copy

312 pages, with 128 illustrations; 16MB download

http://www2.esm.vt.edu/~sdross/books/KoLoMaRo_DMissionBk.pdf

Shane Ross web page:

http://www.shaneross.com/

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