Paul Wiegert
Paul Wiegert is a Canadian astronomer and professor at the University of Western Ontario, specialising in study of unusual orbits of both observed objects and theorised classes of objects. For example, one early paper [1] considers not-known-to-exist planets orbiting the nearby Alpha Centauri star system, while later papers extend that case to more general planetary stability in general binary systems (as exoplanet studies are finding increasingly frequently). This work in particular should be of interest to science fiction authors inventing universes
Other areas of work include identifying the orbits of minor planets in the Solar System, which by virtue of their potential instability could realistically become major threats to civilization when one impacts on Earth again, as they have in the past. Recently, Weigert was involved in the discovery of Earth's first (known) Trojan Asteroid.[2]
References
- ↑ P. Wiegert & M. Holman, (1997) The Stability of Planets in the Alpha Centauri System, Astron. J., 113, 1445-1450.
- ↑ M. Connors, P. Wiegert and C. Veillet (2011), Earth's Trojan Asteroid, Nature, 475, 481-483.