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)
Yeah... And there's also a small chance... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I am sick of pop science (Score:1, Insightful)
eh, whatever. it's interesting. plus it's clearly stated that the story is based on recent simulations, reported in a respected scientific journal (Nature). oh i suppose you would rather leave all scientific stuff to scientists, regardless of the few bits that might interest the layman. God forbid some youngster is intrigued by an article like this and takes up a career in astronomy.
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.
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.
Re:Plus a billion, minus a billion (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt they're that accurate (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or earth could turn into an elephant (Score:2, Insightful)
Mercury's eccentricity can be pumped to values large enough to allow collision with Venus within 5 Gyr
Except that in 5 Gy Sol will be a red giant and have already engulfed Mercury and Venus, and probably Earth as well.
Re:No big deal here (Score:2, Insightful)
But I don't see this as as big enough a deal to justify a Slashdot article.
You are perfectly free, on the internets, to not read anything that doesn't interest you. If you're a logical, rational person, you don't, and you certainly don't go on to comment on those pages that don't interest you telling the people who post them that they shouldn't have since they don't interest you. Amazingly, you are not, in fact, the center of the universe. Whether you personally find something interesting or significant has no bearing on whether other people should or shouldn't post it.