I know there are lots of 'End of the world' scenario's to be paranoid about but this is a new one for me (cant speak for everyone) yet quite
obvious when you think about it.
I found it in
New Scientist magazine
at the end of last week and noticed that nobody here on ATS has disscussed it.
How will life on Earth end? The answer, of course, is unknown, but two new studies suggest a collision with Mercury or Mars could doom life long
before the Sun swells into a red giant and bakes the planet to a crisp in about 5 billion years.
The studies suggest that the solar system's planets will continue to orbit the Sun stably for at least 40 million years. But after that, they show
there is a small but not insignificant chance that things could go terribly awry.
On human timescales, the solar system seems to move as regularly as clockwork. But Isaac Newton realised three centuries ago that the gravitational
tugs the planets exert on each other can potentially nudge them out of their orbits over time.
Predicting what will happen is extremely challenging because so many bodies are involved. Even small errors in the observed positions of the planets
today can translate into huge uncertainties in projections of the future. Because of this, astronomers can only say for sure that the solar system
will remain stable for the next 40 million years.
Surely if it could happen then, then it could happen now, right?
I am pretty sure that an event like this wont affect you or I but it does give another angle to the destruction of any life left in our solar system
in the distant future.
Regards S_G
