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To: PeaceBeWithYou
IOW, about the same odds [,100 to 1, against Mercury's orbit becoming unstable as the odds] of everyone on the planet Earth winning the lotto simultaneously.

Not at all. The odds against six billion people (choosing independently and randomly) picking the same, say six out of 80 numbers, and then having those numbers selected in a random drawing is less than one with fifty-million zeros after it, effectively impossible. (Assuming you grant everyone one entry.) One hundred to one against events occur every day. Would you get on an airplane that had a one in a hundred chance of crashing?

If it does occur, it will be millions of years in the future. The process would be slow, but inexoriable. Each Mercurial year, Mercury's orbit would become a little more enlongated. Assuming Earth is inhabited by a technologically advanced civilization at that time, they would see it coming millions of years in advance.

39 posted on 05/02/2008 4:33:12 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (The women got the vote and the Nation got Harding.)
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

100 to 1 stretched over 7.5 billion years is very long odds.


41 posted on 05/02/2008 8:48:24 AM PDT by PeaceBeWithYou (De Oppresso Liber! (50 million and counting in Afganistan and Iraq))
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