Publications by authors named "Jean-Marc Petit"

Most known trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) gravitationally scattering off the giant planets have orbital inclinations consistent with an origin from the classical Kuiper belt, but a small fraction of these "scattering TNOs" have inclinations that are far too large ( 45°) for this origin. These scattering outliers have previously been proposed to be interlopers from the Oort cloud or evidence of an undiscovered planet. Here we test these hypotheses using N-body simulations and the 69 centaurs and scattering TNOs detected in the Outer Solar Systems Origins Survey and its predecessors.

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With the increasing amount of -omics data available, a particular effort has to be made to provide suitable analysis tools. A major challenge is that of unraveling the molecular regulatory networks from massive and heterogeneous datasets. Here we describe RulNet, a web-oriented platform dedicated to the inference and analysis of regulatory networks from qualitative and quantitative -omics data by means of rule discovery.

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Trojan objects share a planet's orbit, never straying far from the triangular Lagrangian points, 60° ahead of (L4) or behind (L5) the planet. We report the detection of a Uranian Trojan; in our numerical integrations, 2011 QF99 oscillates around the Uranian L4 Lagrange point for >70,000 years and remains co-orbital for ~1 million years before becoming a Centaur. We constructed a Centaur model, supplied from the transneptunian region, to estimate temporary co-orbital capture frequency and duration (to a factor of 2 accuracy), finding that at any time 0.

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Each giant planet of the Solar System has two main types of moons. 'Regular' moons are typically larger satellites with prograde, nearly circular orbits in the equatorial plane of their host planets at distances of several to tens of planetary radii. The 'irregular' satellites (which are typically smaller) have larger orbits with significant eccentricities and inclinations.

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