The Gravitational Sculpting of the Kuiper Belt

Results are presented of numerical integrations over billion year time scales of the orbital evolution of more than one thousand test particles on initially low-inclination, low-eccentricity orbits within the proposed Kuiper belt beyond Neptune. Particles which eventually crossed Neptune's orbit often showed long periods (up to several billion years) of relatively low-eccentricity oscillations punctuated by a very rapid jump to Neptune-crossing eccentricity. This flux may be the ultimate source of present-day short-period comets. It is found here that there exists a correlation between Lyapunov and crossing times in the Kuiper belt