Will Pluto leave its current orbit?

OK, I am not trying here to make any kind of stupid predictions, and I think I am still somewhat sane... lol

I remember someone mentioning in another post a space observation program named Winstars, and I downloaded it from www.winstars.net.... It is indeed very good.

But now, either there is a flaw in the program, or something very strange will happen around the year 3500...

If you go to the heliocentric view of the solar system, set the zoom to the minimum, so that the whole orbit of Pluto is seen, and even more, you see the solar system as it is now.

I was a bit curious about looking in the future... I set the "sky rotations" animations parameters to a step of 365 days and 6 hours, which approximately a year. And I started the animation.

To my astonishment Pluto starts to leave its orbit around the year 3500 and is strangely behaving around the sun: horseshoe-like movements, ... It even came within Uranus orbit! But I continued to watch the animation... Pluto's orbit seemed stranger and stranger, as it kept coming in more inside the solar system, still in horseshoe-like movements, then departed further away than its current orbit, and I mean quite a lot further away...

My last and best surprise is when around 4360 it was nearly ON the sun! In fact, just below the sun... At a distance less than the distance between the sun and Mercury...

So what is that? Is it a flaw in the calculations? All the other planets behaved normally. Is Pluto awaiting a big change in its future? Any experts please comment.

Many thanks in advance for your contributions.

How did you get this figured out? sounds interesting even though it's quite distant...

Actually I didn't figure out anything, I just noticed it! Read again my post, I think it is clear enough. But btw, you may want to try it yourself, download that application and just see it by yourself...

I wonder if it is based on some real data, or if it is a flaw in the calculation engine of the software... Or if even more: would it be that the software is right, and no one guessed it so far? That would be incredible!

Propably some errors in its calculations.

Try this one
www.shatters.net...

your right winstars just totaly loses Pluto,
for any one who wants to check this out download it at www.winstars.com its free
that gave me a good laugh LOL

Yeah, I'm willing to bet that it's just an error in calculations. Try the program E_T suggested, it's pretty good. But just for the sake of arguement, did you see anything else unusual to come and affect Pluto's orbit at all?

Doesn’t the orbit of Pluto cross inside of Neptune’s orbit anyway?

In addition, Pluto’s orbit is not in the plane of the ecliptic.

I imagine that this would make for some extremely difficult calculations with what the mathematicians call ”sensitive dependence on initial conditions.”

Yeah, on both accounts. Besides, I doubt that the creators of the program expected someone to sit there and watch time flow by until 3500... You should watch it longer to see if any other planets go haywire in later years.

Humm dont need a programe to tell me pluto is a fluke planet.
now I have no proff to back up my statments but here goes.
It is well known FACT that plutos orbite brings it accross neptune ever so offton . now sooner or later even if it takes a million years the paths will cross at a point were pluto hits neptune.
This tells you two things one is pluto is history even if it doesent know it yet .and pluto wasent were it is now in the past .It came from someware else and ended up were it is now . this must be true because if pluto had been there from the begining then it would have hit neptune long agaio.
Now this idea could be proven one way or the other if your math or pc is good enough to back track in time plutos path and see if it should have hit neptune millions of years agaio and if the calcations come out to this then you know pluto is a fluke.
my belife is that millions of years agaio there was a planet between mars and jupiter and something big enough hit it causing it to brake up creating two astroid belts selverl moons cought by jupiter and saturn and the leftovers becoming pluto .
again I have no evedence of this but it would be cool to see what the numbers say about this possibilty. Personly I belive our soler system not only created planets from scrach but also grabed a copple extras from other soler systems or deep space in its 5 billion year history.
and even if it dident happen here it has happened in other systems as systems do collide from time to time and even whole galaxes collide as well.
I immange stars stealing planets from each other is quit commen in a universe of gilzillions of stars.

Answer from an e-mail I received from John Walker of Home Planet and Autodesk fame as to why software loses it (Home Planet makes it go bye bye at 2100):




Hope that helps....

The truth is....we dont know much about pluto.
And we know even less about whats beyong pluto.
i would not be surprised to see there are still large planets beyond pluto that are yet undiscovered.

I will cast a vote for flaw in calculations.
but if Pluto is in a decaying orbit what about the Kuper belt?
but then again I am not going to be in the same form when all this happens.

Also, not an expert

I have watched carefully and honestly everything runs good until then, although some planets (Mercury, Mars, Uranus) have slightly (unnoticeable if not zoomed a bit) moved from their original orbit. Except that, there was nothing at all unusual that I noticed.



No, Pluto and Neptune orbits don't cross each other. Pluto comes inside Neptune's orbit, but the orbits dont pass at the same point. Pluto's orbit is tilted, and actually, Pluto would pass under Neptune at that occurence. It is true though that at some point, they will eventually come very close to each other.

Actually, that's what I was willing to see when I did that thing. I wanted to see when they would come very very close!

It's actually not so simple. Exacting ephemera have been calculated for just the planets we've been to. Most software uses a "mean orbital element" which uses the Sun as the main gravitational body and will calculate the individual orbits in relation to that, ignoring the gravitational effects of the other planets. It's good enough for visual work, but to be accurate (as in sending off a spaceship) you have to do a whole bunch of hairy integrations for the whole 10 body system and even then a human has to interpret when to stop those integrations.

Pluto has not been fully flushed out yet, taking into account the gravitational effects over the long term of the whole system. Interesting that Pluto just crossed back out to be the furthest "planet", I think in 1999 - yeah arguments there still as to whether it's a planet and Sedna is another ball of wax (or dirt) to consider in that light as well. There is a whole boatload of crud zipping around out there....

The boys at JPL's Solar System Dynamics Group have some nifty pages on this stuff as they actually do have to have these accurate elements. ssd.jpl.nasa.gov...

As SpookyVince stated, Pluto would pass under Neptune's orbit.

Otherwise, the best bet about Pluto is that it was a moon from another planet, most likely Neptune, that somehow escaped. That, or it's a dislodged Kuiper Belt object.

As for the astreoid belt, it wasn't something that smashed into a formed planet, but the planet never actually formed. The tidal forces between the Sun and Jupiter caused this.

And UofCinLA brought up a great point about how the programs do their math. Thanks for the website, by the way. It's getting added to the Forum Reference Library.

Errr....this sounds alot like this:

www.diagnosis2012.co.uk...

YIPES! please say it isn't so!

Erm... Yeah, I really wouldn't worry about that one mate. Comets have VERY little mass, even compared to an asteroid. The only way a comet could affect the orbit of one that greatly would be to impact it. Besides, all that 2012 crud is based off of next to nothing.

One more thing. I really liked the statement from that link stating, "My low-precision orbit model gave Earth impact of Phobos on September 18, 2012 with an escape velocity of 3.99731 km/s...."

Yeah, that cracked me up.

LOL @ cmdrkeenkid !! Some people really believe that, you know...

By the way, thanks all for those great answers, even if a definite answer has not been found... I think my very first question about all this is something like "can it really happen" even if it is not in 3500+... I mean, it is true that Pluto is not well understood and known, so...

Also, it doesn't seem that other planets come to a strange behavior in that software (winstars, that is) unless maybe someone is patient enough to try it to years up to 12,000 or more...

ROTF

Kinda reminds me about this:
www.rinkworks.com...

I do have a strong feeling something will happen in the 2011-2013 period, I have been saying it since I was a kid...

But I am very certain it's something good...