Is the outer Solar System chaotic?

Abstract

The existence of chaos in the system of Jovian planets has been in question for the past 15 years. Various investigators have found Lyapunov times ranging from about 5 millions years upwards to infinity, with no clear reason for the discrepancy. In this paper, we resolve the issue. The position of the outer planets is known to only a few parts in 10 million. We show that, within that observational uncertainty, there exist Lyapunov timescales in the full range listed above. Thus, the ``true'' Lyapunov timescale of the outer Solar System cannot be resolved using current observations.