A recent scientific study has caused concern by suggesting that a slight 0.1 percent alteration in Neptunes orbit resulting from the passage of a star could potentially lead to collisions among planets in our solar system. This research, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society sheds light on how a relatively common cosmic event called a "stellar flyby" could set the stage for such catastrophic occurrences.
The Significance of Mercury and Jupiters Perihelion
The study goes on to explain that if Mercury and Jupiters perihelion points, which are when they are closest to the Sun in their orbits align with each other two potential scenarios may arise. Firstly Mercurys orbit could be. It may get ejected from the Solar System altogether. Alternatively it could lead to a collision with Venus or even Earth itself.
Timeline of Potential Changes
While these changes would take millions of years to unfold researchers conducted simulations over three thousand times. Surprisingly out of these simulations more than 2,000 resulted in either collisions or the expulsion of Uranus, Neptune or Mercury, from our Solar System.
Garett Brown, a graduate student in physics from the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences (PES) at the University of Toronto highlighted the ongoing research focused on exploring how stellar flybys impact planetary systems. According to him in star clusters where planetary systems form stellar flybys are believed to play a role during their time within the cluster. However once the cluster disperses the frequency of flybys decreases significantly reducing their influence on the evolution of planetary systems.
Brown also assured that these potential disturbances in the Solar System would not affect the predicted expansion of the Sun and its eventual engulfment of Earth in five billion years. Therefore there is no cause for concern.
This research provides insights into understanding our solar systems dynamic nature and gaining knowledge, about the long term consequences of stellar flybys ultimately enhancing our understanding of the cosmos.
Reference(s): Peer-Reviewed Research
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