A passing star could fling the Earth out of the Sun's orbit
The Earth may one day be pulled out of its perfect position by a passing star, a new study has revealed. And Mercury will also play a part. The smallest planet has an oval-shaped orbit, which can sometimes wobble due to Jupiter's huge gravitational influence as the solar system's largest planet. A passing star could exacerbate this affect, with significant consequences on the planet we call home... (Picture: Getty) Dr Nathan Kaib, an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute, who is based in Iowa, and Dr Sean Raymond, an astronomer at the University of Bordeaux in France, published their findings in the journal Icarus after they created simulations of what would happen when our solar system passes nearby stars over the next several billion years (Picture: Getty) The researchers said the gravity of a passing star could hurl us into space - predicting a probability that this could happen of 1 in 500 or 0.2%. However, that is not the only thing that could happen. The sheer gravitational force could also throw all the planets out of whack, and could even send one of them smashing into Earth (Picture: Getty) What could happen is that Mercury would go off path, and collide with either the Sun or Venus. Then, this could lead either Venus or Mars to crash into Earth or the Earth to crash into the Sun. Another scenario is that Venus and Mars could fling out toward Jupiter, with the planet's gravity throwing Earth out of the Solar System altogether (Picture: Getty) Dr Kaib, who was the lead author, wrote: 'Our simulations indicate that isolated models of the solar system can underestimate the degree of our giant planets' future secular orbital changes by over an order of magnitude.' The work shows that astronomers may be overlooking the influence of distant objects and how our solar system interacts with the rest of the universe (Picture: Getty) Speaking to Science News, Dr Kaib revealed that there's about a 5% chance that over the next five billion years that a wayward star could come within 100 astronomical units of our solar system. This is around 100 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. But, there's no need to worry (Picture: Getty) Dr Kaib said to the site that 'none of these things are probable.' However, in the paper he writes: 'Nonetheless, this probability of Earth orbital change is hundreds of times larger than prior estimates.' They also note, that stars which move slowly, at less than 10 kilometers per second relative to the Sun, are risky as they will prolong their gravitational tugs on our planet (Picture: Getty)
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