Damping-Antidamping Effect on Comets Motion

TL;DR

This paper investigates the effects of damping and antidamping forces on comet motion, deriving key physical quantities and applying the results to Halley's comet to understand its orbital behavior under star wind influence.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to handle mass-variable systems via Galilean transformation and models damping-antidamping effects in comet dynamics.

Findings

Derived a constant of motion, Lagrangian, and Hamiltonian for the system.

Analyzed the period of the comet's orbit considering damping effects.

Applied the theoretical model to Halley's comet to interpret its motion.

Abstract

We make an observation about Galilean transformation on a 1-D mass variable systems which leads us to the right way to deal with mass variable systems. Then using this observation, we study two-bodies gravitational problem where the mass of one of the bodies varies and suffers a damping-antidamping effect due to star wind during its motion. For this system, a constant of motion, a Lagrangian and a Hamiltonian are given for the radial motion, and the period of the body is studied using the constant of motion of the system. Our theoretical results are applied to Halley's comet.