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| A catastrophic collision with Mercury or Mars may be in Earth's future (Illustration: NASA/JPL-Caltech) |
Posted on 04/23/2008 9:07:16 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
How will life on Earth end? The answer, of course, is unknown, but two new studies suggest a collision with Mercury or Mars could doom life long before the Sun swells into a red giant and bakes the planet to a crisp in about 5 billion years.
The studies suggest that the solar system's planets will continue to orbit the Sun stably for at least 40 million years. But after that, they show there is a small but not insignificant chance that things could go terribly awry.
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| A catastrophic collision with Mercury or Mars may be in Earth's future (Illustration: NASA/JPL-Caltech) |
(Excerpt) Read more at space.newscientist.com ...
Are we worrying yet?
Mars, off the Earth, into the side black hole. *dusts cue*
And just what is going to change in the next 40 million that hasn’t changed in the first 4.2 billion that’s going to cause the problem?
Global warming is going to kill us all anyway, so big deal.
Well who did it? Bush or Global Warming?
Another example of the media doing nothing useful, and just doing everything they can to raise our anxiety level.
Nothing. It’s just that a gravitational n-body system for n > 2 exhibits chaotic dynamics, and it’s possible that the system could move into a different part of the phase space just in the normal course of things.
Small gravitational perturbations can produce really big orbit shifts over time. The solar system is a quasi-stable system at present, but it can become chaotic at pretty much any time...
Global warming is going to kill us all anyway, so big deal.
You're obviously not keeping up with the program...
True also for a Presidential campaign. Got three candidates and it's dynamically chaotic.
"I don't deserve this... to die like this. I was building a house."
The General/Chat zot...what’s the point of continuing to live?
“Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
What’s this news going to do to the price of oil? I guess i may as well get that double cheeseburger and banana split today.
You heretical denier you. Someone should burn you at the stake. The science is settled, don’tcha know.
I guess i may as well get that double cheeseburger and banana split today.
Living like there's no tomorrow 40 million years from now just makes good sense. Go for it!
This is the first good solid reason I have come up with....today!
God does not play snooker with the universe. - apologies to Albert Einstein
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