Earth Could Collide With Other Planets 255
Everybody put on your helmet;
Smivs writes "Astronomers calculate there is a tiny chance that Mars or Venus could collide with Earth — though it would not happen for at least a billion years.
The finding comes from simulations to show how orbits of planets might evolve billions of years into the future. But the calculated chances of such events occurring are tiny. Writing in the journal Nature, a team led by Jacques Laskar shows there is also a chance Mercury could strike Venus and merge into a larger planet. Professor Laskar of the Paris Observatory and his colleagues also report that Mars might experience a close encounter with Jupiter — whose massive gravity could hurl the Red Planet out of our Solar System."
Not soon enough for me (Score:2, Insightful)
Or earth could turn into an elephant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or earth could turn into an elephant (Score:5, Funny)
There are tiny odds of just about anything happening, why is it news?
Yeah, and we can't even use the excuse that it was a posting by kdawson. Come on, Taco!
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As Stephen King said, "Everything's eventual."
Yeah, man, everything's REAL eventual :-)
Great line - I keep telling myself that.
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As Stephen King said, "Everything's eventual."
He did not. I'm sure he said those words at some point, but not as a statement. He entitled a story "Everything's Eventual" (hell, likely as not, his editor entitled it). Pat Conroy did not say "The lords of discipline", John Barth did not say "Lost in the funhouse", and Douglas Beane did not say "Too wong foo, thanks for everything, Julie Newmar". Yeesh! This is even worse than people who attribute characters' quotes to the author directly.
Re:Or earth could turn into an elephant (Score:5, Funny)
There are tiny odds of just about anything happening
I know that fervent believers will condemn my denial of the Elephant Rapture, but there is zero chance of the Earth turning into a proboscidean of any sort.
Re:Or earth could turn into an elephant (Score:4, Funny)
It's Elephants all the way down, damn it!
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Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
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http://www.universetoday.com/2009/06/10/wild-little-mercury-to-cause-interplanetary-smashup-maybe/
So you're telling me there's a chance! (Score:2)
"What was that 'one in a million' talk all about then"?
There's a tiny chance anyone on here will ever kiss a girl, but we still sit puckered up just in case. You know we all do. Muuuuuaah.
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Well, NOW I do. Curse you, dmomo!
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Because the collision of two planets is beyond epic.
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Because the collision of two planets is beyond epic.
You mean it's Legendary?
Re:Or earth could turn into an elephant (Score:5, Informative)
From TFAbstract, helpfully linked downstream:
It has been established that, owing to the proximity of a resonance with Jupiter, Mercury's eccentricity can be pumped to values large enough to allow collision with Venus within 5 Gyr (refs 1â"3). This conclusion, however, was established either with averaged equations1, 2 that are not appropriate near the collisions or with non-relativistic models in which the resonance effect is greatly enhanced by a decrease of the perihelion velocity of Mercury2, 3. In these previous studies, the Earth's orbit was essentially unaffected. Here we report numerical simulations of the evolution of the Solar System over 5 Gyr, including contributions from the Moon and general relativity.
The authors claim this is the first extended simulation set incorporating GR and avoiding the problematic averaging technique.
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Excepting the simulation that's already been running for the last 4 billion years that is.
Its not what happens in 5 Gyr... (Score:2)
I am not worried about something that may happen in billions of years. I think the chance that I will be around then is even smaller.
What we should be aware of is that if this can happen, it may already have happened in some other solar system...
A Jupiter like planet has been catapulted out of another solar system and is planning a visit... Latest calculations predict collision with Earth somewhere at the end of 2012.
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I am not worried about something that may happen in billions of years. I think the chance that I will be around then is even smaller.
I just finished reading Spin [amazon.com] by by Robert Charles Wilson. I'm now terrified that this will, in fact, happen within my lifetime.
Re:Its not what happens in 5 Gyr... (Score:5, Funny)
A Jupiter like planet has been catapulted out of another solar system and is planning a visit... Latest calculations predict collision with Earth somewhere at the end of 2012.
"The year, 1994. From out of space, comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Man's civilization is cast in ruin.
"Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn. A strange new world rises from the old. A world of savagery, super-science, and sorcery.
"But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice. With his companions, Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword, against the forces of evil. He is Thundarr, the Barbarian!"
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Re:Or earth could turn into an elephant (Score:4, Insightful)
Combine that headline with a nice cover graphic of planets smashing up into bits, and it sells magazines. Welcome to the publishing world.
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Here's a straight copy of the description, since I know almost nothing about the domain it's describing:
The model for the integration of the planetary orbits is derived from the La2004 model9 that was integrated over 250 Myr for the study of the palaeoclimates of the Earth and Mars9, 12. It comprises the eight major planets and Pluto and includes relativistic13 and averaged lunar contributions14 (Supplementary Information). We used the SABA4 symplectic integrator15, which is adapted to perturbed Hamiltonian systems. The step size is 2.5x10^-2 years, unless the eccentricity of the planets increases beyond about 0.4, in which case the step size is reduced to preserve numerical accuracy.
9. Laskar, J. et al. A long term numerical solution for the insolation quantities of the Earth. Astron. Astrophys. 428, 261-285 (2004)
12. Laskar, J. et al. Long term evolution and chaotic diffusion of the insolation quantities of Mars. Icarus 170, 343-364 (2004)
13. Saha, P. & Tremaine, S. Long-term planetary integration with individual time steps. Astron. J. 108, 1962-1969 (1994)
14. Boué, G. & Laskar, J. Precession of a planet with a satellite. Icarus 196, 1-15 (2008)
15. Laskar, J. & Robutel, P. High order symplectic integrators for perturbed Hamiltonian systems. Celest. Mech. Dynam. Astron. 80, 39-62 (2001)
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Never mind (Score:2)
I can record that event in my 64bit unix timestamp field.
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And no need to switch to 128bit timestamp when the Earth is no more. What a relief.
No big deal here (Score:3, Informative)
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I'm not so sure.
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Re:No big deal here (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, this result is a big deal. First, the authors used powerful new techniques to solve some long-standing problems in these sorts of simulations. This has allowed them to run simulations far further into the future (or the past) than was possible before. Second, they included General Relativity and the affects of planetary satellites in their calculations, which improves the precision of their results. This has not been done before. Third, this work is the first to put a quantitative time scale on instability in the inner Solar System. Up until now we knew that the orbits of the inner planets were unstable, but we had no idea how long it would take for those instabilities to lead to major changes in orbital parameters. Finally, this result has profound implications for the stability of planetary systems in general, which affects the probability of their being Earth-like planets around other stars, and thus the chances of there being animal life out there. This is a major paper and may become the baseline for this entire sub-field. It certainly deserved to be published in Nature. It is too bad that the media chose to glom onto the sensationalist aspects of the story.
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What's more interesting than the odds and particular outcomes is the advances in simulation methodology which enable them to reach those conclusions.
He's no Pope (Score:2)
Looks like God screwed that one up.
whats up woth bbc today (Score:5, Funny)
first they announce that the recession is over in the UK (yeh right!)
then we find out earth is about to collide with another planet
at least the later is more believable :D
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Actually, by one measure, it is over in Britain [slashdot.org]. Diffusion indexes show that the British economy expanded slightly recently. You Brits should probably not vote that Labor party out quite yet...
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I am sick of pop science (Score:2)
Is it any wonder the general public doesn't take science seriou
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Is it any wonder the general public doesn't take science seriously nowadays?
They will as soon as someone makes the movie.
Re:I am sick of pop science (Score:4, Informative)
How do you know this is the fault of the scientists? It could very easily be lazy and/or sensationalistic journalism -- same stuff as "this has as much info as x libraries of congress" or "as much volume as x ping-pong balls", or half of what kdawson posts.
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Is it any wonder the general public doesn't take science seriously nowadays?
It sort of seems like the problem is that science doesn't take the general public seriously nowadays.
Link to article in Nature (Score:2)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/full/nature08096.html [nature.com]
Full story requires payment or subscription (which I don't have), but the blurb reads:
This new science is getting scary (Score:5, Funny)
Let's go back to crystalline spheres and immutable heavens. That was a much safer design model
Re:This new science is getting scary (Score:4, Funny)
Let's go back to crystalline spheres and immutable heavens. That was a much safer design model
Sadly we weren't using version control back then and our backups have been lost. It looks like we can't revert to the last stable version so we will have to find a way to make the current system stable until we can upgrade to Universe 2.0.
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we keep trying to upgrade to universe 2.0.
the thing is, god forgot to install a watchdog timer and the system keeps booting and resetting endlessly.
what we need is god 2.0 - to really fix this implementation correctly.
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Let's go back to crystalline spheres and immutable heavens. That was a much safer design model.
On the other hand, it could be worse.
If Mercury and Venus, for example, collide and merge into one, all those born under the sign of Gemini and Libra will be doomed to live in uncharted (pun intended) territory.
I thought we all agreed that the French... (Score:2)
were no longer allowed to use arcane mathematical models.
Give a man a model, and he'll fret for a day. Teach a man to model, and he'll have major news media fretting forever...
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Give a geek a model, and he'll fret for a day. Teach a geek to model, and he'll have major news media fretting forever...
There, fixed that for you. Because:
Give a man a model, and he'll have a great time with her.
Worlds collide! (Score:3, Funny)
Very cool (Score:2)
Just the workarounds for the floating point math must be cool to see. Or the optimizations they would use in a simulation like this.
Let's sing Cole Porter... in harmony... (Score:2)
What a Swell Party This Is [lyricstime.com]
"Have you heard that Mimsie Starr
Just got pinched in the As...tor bar?
Well, did you evah?
What a swell party this is!
Have you heard? It's in the stars,
Next July we collide with Mars!
Well, did you evah?
What a swell party this is!"
Allow me to be the politician (Score:2)
"A couple billion years? Who cares, I'm not in office anymore when that happens!"
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O Noes!!! (Score:2)
(OK, now off to actually read the article....)
I'm gonna party like it's 1999... (Score:2)
We launch out of the Solar System and into the galaxy, meeting strange alien beings along the way. We will build shuttlecraft, and call them "Eagles".
Earth crashes into Mars, we move into
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Plus a billion, minus a billion (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't take long playing with simple, fun orbit simulators [arachnoid.com] to see that while most planetesimals get glommed, a few get chucked. Escape velocity from the Sun at Mars distance is WAY MORE* (technological term) than Jupiter could perturb. Some things tossed could have 'very long' periods, but still not escape. THAT would be news.
And yes, I am a rocket scientist and yes, I HAVE done the math.
Vcircular * sqrt(2) = Vescape! 41% is too much, even for Jupiter.
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I'd laugh if Velikovsky had some of the radical ideas right (even as he was vilified for the totality of his thoughts).
"Worlds in Collision" indeed.
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It probably happened to Earth. (Score:3, Interesting)
The current theory is that a Mars-sized planet collided with Earth sometime in history. When this planet, usually named Theia [wikipedia.org], collided with Earth, some of the disturbed matter from both planets got ejected into space, some fell onto and became part of Earth, and some got caught in orbit around Earth as natural satellites.
The resulting dust either escaped or eventually coalesced into the modern Earth and Moon.
Free ride through the Milky Way? (Score:2)
>> Mars might experience a close encounter with Jupiter -- whose massive gravity could hurl the Red Planet out of our Solar System.
Woo hoo! Let's colonize it now. We won't have to worry about the inter-stellar travel problem.
Movie Promotion? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455856/ [imdb.com]
Rocky Horror (Score:2)
"But when worlds collide," said George Pal to his bride, "I'm gonna give you some Terrible Thrills."
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I thought he promised her some drugs and some pills...
Propagation of error (Score:2)
Since Nature actually published them, I wonder if perhaps th
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It's Mercury colliding with other planets, not Earth, and I read the article on Ars Technica yesterday, and you're right, the collision isn't the focus, it's the ability to use more complex equations using variables previously ignored due to that complexity in modelling, coupled with similarity of some previous work, apparently. What's more, they ran 2500 simulations, and less than 1% had Mercury colliding with a planet.
"Out of the 2,500 runs that were performed, only about one percent resulted in a major d
So?? (Score:2)
Astronomers calculate there is a tiny chance that Mars or Venus could collide with Earth -- though it would not happen for at least a billion years.
That's no reason not to print another $500 billion to study the problem! If it saves just one child's life in a billion years, then it's worth it! Why do you hate the Earth? Hater.
Damned Scientists (Score:2)
Why can't they come up with a plausible theory of apocalypse by snu-snu?
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Because they first have to solve the problem of the majority of Slashdotters living in their parents' basement.
Once that's been overcome, snu-snu here we come! ;)
Re:Damned Scientists (Score:4, Funny)
Why can't they come up with a plausible theory of apocalypse by snu-snu?
Unfortunately, it seems, the world ends not with a bang but a whimper.
Before it's too late (Score:2)
Probabilities... (Score:2)
there's a tiny chance (Score:2, Insightful)
that the earth may simply stop existing because if it's quantum state. This applies to the universe as well.
This is why this isn't news.
By then... (Score:2)
Stop the fucking presses! (Score:2)
Wait, so given enough time, massive objects in relatively close proximity to one another might drift together? Holy shit!
I doubt they're that accurate (Score:3, Insightful)
Prediction is meaningless (Score:3, Informative)
The inner solar system is chaotic with a Lyuapanov time on the order of 5 million years - On average, two very nearby orbits will change their distance between each other in phase-space by a constant in that time. This makes the solar system's future evolution profoundly dependent on initial conditions and integrator accuracy.
First of all it's hard to maintain integration accuracy for more than a few Lyuapanov times, especially when the system has such an enormous dynamic range in mass and characteristic orbital times as the solar system, since this requires that the integrator be exponentially more accurate. The outer solar system is routinely integrated for hundreds of millions of years (and I've run several such simulations myself with a 10th order symplectic integrator) but most simulations of the inner solar system run for a few tens of millions of years at most. A 5 billion year integration of the inner solar system will require that errors be supressed on the order of e^-1000, which is absurd.
Second of all, chaotic systems are also defined by their extreme dependence on initial conditions. Our observational knowledge of the positions of the planets only extends to about 7 digits at best, which makes any simulation in which displacing something by 1 part in e^1000 changes the outcome meaningless. In addition, at such levels of precision other effects come into play - Relativity changes the details of Earth's orbit significantly from the classical prediction after about 10 million years.
You can plug whatever numbers you want into a symplectic integrator and it'll run as long as you want without blowing up, but that doesn't mean the numbers mean anything.
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What are the figures for gerbils?
rj
Re:Yeah... And there's also a small chance... (Score:5, Funny)
Next up.. How to make a tinfoil hat that can stop the CIA's mind control rays.
You have my undivided attention.
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You have my undivided attention.
Here it is: How to make a dunce hat [answers.com]
Just use tinfoil as material.
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I know this is a funny-ha-ha joke, but to completely dismiss and trivialize the notion of sheeple isn't really doing humanity any favors... I wish this particular meme would die a silent death.
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Disaster? We've only been human for less than a hundred thousand years. Sixty five million years ago, we were small creatures that resembled rodents.
Even if no disaster strikes, in a billion years our decendants will not be human. They will resemble us about as much as we resemble field mice.
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See A Nerd's Guide to Getting Laid [slashdot.org] (nsfw)
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The Mayan Calendar ends in 2012, too.
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http://www.cracked.com/article_17445_6-best-2012-apocalypse-theories-are-all-bullshit.html [cracked.com]
*cough cough*
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No Nostradamus predicted that the world would end in about 3000 AD. He also predicted that a catastrophic global war would start in 1999 and that the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1986 would signal widespread human cannabalism. What you are thinking of is the end of the current cycle of the Mayan long count calendar, which will occur in 2012. However, all that will happen then is that the next cycle will begin.
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What do the Cubs and Cardinals have in common? Neither one has won the World Series in their home stadium! [wikipedia.org]
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Technically that's true of the Yankees and Mets also since they both decided to build new stadiums that opened this year.
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Re:I'm no physicist ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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No, that is the whole point of non-linear dynamics. One can never know the initial conditions precisely enough to make predictions over arbitrarily long time scales.