Earth Could Collide With Other Planets

Everybody put on your helmet; Smivs writes "Astronomers calculate there is a tiny chance that Mars or Venus could collide with Earth — though it would not happen for at least a billion years. The finding comes from simulations to show how orbits of planets might evolve billions of years into the future. But the calculated chances of such events occurring are tiny. Writing in the journal Nature, a team led by Jacques Laskar shows there is also a chance Mercury could strike Venus and merge into a larger planet. Professor Laskar of the Paris Observatory and his colleagues also report that Mars might experience a close encounter with Jupiter — whose massive gravity could hurl the Red Planet out of our Solar System."

Comments

Not soon enough for me

[DragonFodder]

mors certa, hora incerta

Or earth could turn into an elephant

[GreenEnvy22]

There are tiny odds of just about anything happening, why is it news?

Re:Or earth could turn into an elephant

[sherriw]

Combine that headline with a nice cover graphic of planets smashing up into bits, and it sells magazines. Welcome to the publishing world.

Re:Or earth could turn into an elephant

[jae471]

Mercury's eccentricity can be pumped to values large enough to allow collision with Venus within 5 Gyr

Except that in 5 Gy Sol will be a red giant and have already engulfed Mercury and Venus, and probably Earth as well.

Yeah... And there's also a small chance...

[MBaldelli]

...I could win the PowerBall or MegaMillion jackpot if it's actually over $150 million. And in about the same time as the slight possibility of the Earth, Mars, or Venus change orbit enough to actually collide.... Really... Isn't this as much as the story some years back when it was shown that using the use of atmospheric breaking causing Jupiter's rotation to lose a second of time over 50,000 or more years? I call FUD. Next up.. How to make a tinfoil hat that can stop the CIA's mind control rays.

Re:I am sick of pop science

[Anonymous Coward]

eh, whatever. it's interesting. plus it's clearly stated that the story is based on recent simulations, reported in a respected scientific journal (Nature). oh i suppose you would rather leave all scientific stuff to scientists, regardless of the few bits that might interest the layman. God forbid some youngster is intrigued by an article like this and takes up a career in astronomy.

there's a tiny chance

[Tiber]

that the earth may simply stop existing because if it's quantum state. This applies to the universe as well.

This is why this isn't news.

Re:Plus a billion, minus a billion

[starglider29a]

I wonder what Slashdot would have said about Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and the Cosmological Constant when those ideas were first burgeoning. And from a PATENT CLERK, no less.

I doubt they're that accurate

[selven]

Even if they can somehow account for every small asteroid that will change the course of Earth's orbit over a billion years, they can't possibly account for the possibility (near-certainty unless we nuke ourselves to death) that we will, possibly before the end of this century, be able to cause drastic changes to anything in the solar system.

Re:No big deal here

[osu-neko]

But I don't see this as as big enough a deal to justify a Slashdot article.

You are perfectly free, on the internets, to not read anything that doesn't interest you. If you're a logical, rational person, you don't, and you certainly don't go on to comment on those pages that don't interest you telling the people who post them that they shouldn't have since they don't interest you. Amazingly, you are not, in fact, the center of the universe. Whether you personally find something interesting or significant has no bearing on whether other people should or shouldn't post it.