One planet will trigger the death of everyone in the solar system. A star will aid and abet
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "One planet will trigger the death of everyone in the solar system. A star will aid and abet")
AI image of planets dying in the solar system. (Photo: Freepik)
Scientists have painted a scary scenario for the solar system, where one passerby might trigger the death of every planet, crushing some and flinging others into deep space.
Earth might be in danger of getting smacked by another planet in the future. This might be how we all go, according to a new study. Published in the journal Icarus, it states how the study authors created a simulation to understand what a wayward star can do to Earth and the other planets in the solar system.
The study states that Earth, Sun and other planets that orbit our star do not exist in a silo. There are billions more stars teeming in the Milky Way. So if a rogue star were to ever brush past the solar system, it could push out planets from their orbits, creating a chaotic scene where they'll crash into each other.
In this scenario, another planet can hit Earth out of the solar system, and even the Milky Way, and fling it into deep space, far away from the Sun. No need to mention, life as we know it, will end on the blue planet.
One planet can trigger death of every planet in the solar system
They admit that stars often move near the solar system without posing any threat. However, things can go awry because of one planet - Mercury. The closest planet to the Sun is prone to instability, and a thrust by a star can make its orbit highly elliptical. This can lead it to crash into either the Sun or Venus.
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This could trigger a chain reaction, leading one of the planets to crash into Earth.
Also Read: Did an asteroid enter Earth over China? Bright fireball and explosion reported in Guangdong
Mercury and Mars would be lost in a violent encounter
The scientists used NASA’s Horizons System to run 2,000 simulations. It tells the exact position of every object in the solar system. They found that alien stars can make the solar system about 50 per cent less stable in the next 5 billion years. There is a 3.9 per cent chance that Pluto would be ejected from the solar system, and Mercury and Mars would be lost.
Even though Earth is stable, its orbit will become unstable if a planet crashes into it. In fact, the chances of this happening were found to be hundreds of times more than prior estimates. A stellar flyby would also be extremely violent as compared to an internal event.
