In these simulations, planets venturing close to a white dwarf become less likely as the spread of masses among the planets grows.

The paper

The paper's details are OpenAlex's; the citation count is OpenAlex's, 15 Oct 2026. The line on the paper is machine-written, as noted under Why it matters.

Why it matters

Written by Claude (claude-sonnet-5-5) on 15 Oct 2026 from the paper's abstract (as arXiv publishes it) and its OpenAlex record. Machine-written context to help a reader: it is not evidence, it moves no number, and it may be wrong. The quoted sentence is the claim; where it stands is computed from the record. If it misreads the paper, tell the stewards.

The story so far

1. 1

   What the authors did

   They ran over 450 numerical integrations of tightly packed planetary systems with planets of unequal mass, each spanning a Hubble time (14 Gyr) and all phases of stellar evolution, then examined trends by planet order and mass.

   Machine-written from the paper's abstract, as noted under Why it matters.

2. 2

   What they found

   • Intrusive radial incursions near the white dwarf become less likely as the dispersion in planet masses increases.
   • Orbital meandering depends more on the presence of terrestrial-mass planets than on any variation in planetary mass.
   • Triggering instability in the white dwarf phase is comparably easy for unequal-mass and equal-mass systems, while instabilities during the giant branch phase remain rare and need fine-tuned initial conditions.

   Machine-written from the paper's abstract, as noted under Why it matters.

3. 3

   What has been checked on Ecdysis

   Exuvia registered the claim on 15 October 2026, with a test written from the paper. No check has been filed yet.

What would check it

How far it has been checked

1. 1
   The object itself, checked againverification · not yet

   Not yet: re-run the paper's analysis on its own data, where the authors have published it.

2. 2
   New instances of the constructionreproduction · not yet

   Not yet: the same construction run afresh.

3. 3
   The designrobustness tests and arguments · not yet

   Nothing yet: change the method or the data and see whether it holds (a robustness test), or argue that the method does not test what the claim says.

How sure is the record?

Share this finding

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Click a post's text to select all of it. Both posts give the claim's standing on the record, and the longer one says what the checks show and what they do not; the wording changes when the record does. The longer post quotes the paper first, then gives the machine-written headline, marked as such; edit it as you like. To cite the claim, see Cite this claim.

What would prove it wrong

Refuted if an independent set of numerical integrations shows that the frequency of intrusive radial incursions near a white dwarf does not decrease by at least 20% when mass dispersion is increased from low to high, as measured over ≥200 simulations.

The test as Exuvia registered it on 15 Oct 2026, written from the paper's words.

The wider literature

Earlier work it rests on, as the citing paper says

• uncheckedThe problem can be overcome using a hybrid method, in which the close encounter term is integrated using a conventional integrator, whilst the remaining terms are solved symplectically.takes its method from, as the citing paper says · from the literature · identified by Exuvia: “The output from SSE was ported directly into a heavily modified version of the Mercury planetary evolution code, originally from Chambers (1999).”

Other claims from the same paper

• uncheckedIn these simulations, orbital meandering around white dwarfs depends more on terrestrial-mass planets being present than on how planet masses vary.“The orbital meandering which may sustain a sufficiently dynamic environment around a white dwarf to explain observations is more dependent on the presence of terrestrial-mass planets than any variati…”
• uncheckedIn these simulations, instability in white dwarf systems is about as easy to trigger with unequal-mass planets as equal-mass ones; giant-branch instability stays rare.“Triggering unpacking or instability during the white dwarf phase is comparably easy for systems of unequal-mass planets and systems of equal-mass planets; instabilities during the giant branch phase…”

Headlines are machine-written from the paper's abstract, or from the quote and the paper's title where no abstract is open; each claim's own words are quoted beneath its headline.