Talk:Kirkwood gap

message: Minor point for sake of clarity, not altering the intended meaning. Original definition implied that gaps were in a distribution along some undefined axis of the universe of "all asteroids having a semi-major axis" as opposed to asteroids without one. All asteroids do have a semi-major axis. In statistics a distribution is generally defined as "by" a dimension along which sample or universe frequency, density, probability etc. are reported or estimated. I changed "with" to "by".  [ I like this discussion! ] Spamhog (talk) 14:57, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: "by" dimension

message: There is no doubt that the gaps are caused by orbital resonances with Jupiter. Hence, I have removed the parts of the article which implied that this was somehow disputed. 
The abstract that was referenced in older versions of the article was about research that showed that the orbits of several asteroids which do exist in the gaps have orbits that are practically stable over timescales of 1000 Jupiter years (About 10000 Earth years). However, this is a very short time scale astronomically. The orbits of asteroids in the resonances change significantly only over times of many millions of years. Over the age of the solar system, there has been more than enough time to sweep the Kirkwood gaps clean many times over. Deuar 20:43, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cause of the gaps

message: There are a bunch of weak gaps mentioned in the article. They're not visible in the histogram. Are they real gaps in the distribution (narrow, perhaps?), or just calculated locations of resonances which do not lead to any significant depletion of asteroids? Deuar 16:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  weak gaps 

message: The article dates the discovery of the gaps to 1857. The source it links to ("Banners in the Wilderness") gives the date 1866 and states that Kirkland only taught at Canonsburg from 1865-7. 
Now, he may well have noticed the gaps in 1857, but the source does not support that and his paper on the subject was printed in 1866. I am going to alter the date, but if someone with better access to sources can show it was '57, please revert! :) Jellyandjocko (talk) 23:06, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Thought on the Date 

message: I was going to break apart this sentence to make it clearer, and then I realized that I couldn't parse its meaning: "Most of the Kirkwood gaps are depleted, unlike the mean-motion resonances (MMR) of Neptune or Jupiter's 3:2 resonance, due to the overlapping of the ν5 and ν6 secular resonances within the mean-motion resonances." Firstly, it's not clear from its structure whether the overlapping causes the depletion or the exceptions to depletion. Secondly, the ambiguity is partly due to the undefined v5 and v6 terms. Where are those little terms defined? Would someone who is so immersed in this that my point seems pointless please link the v5 & v6 to something and then break apart (or re-order) the sentence so it's clear which clause it's modifying.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeffryfisher (talk • contribs) 02:03, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The mean motion resonances of Neptune are occupied, an example is the plutinos. Similarly the Hilda group are in a 3:2 resonance with Jupiter. I added a link to secular resonances. Agmartin (talk) 21:41, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ambiguous sentence with undefined jargon