Catastrophists and doomsayers have a choice: global warming, asteroids, comets, supervolcanoes … But normally they do not usually consider a threat that leaves the previous ones in diapers: the collision of the Earth against another planet in the Solar System. It could happen? Yes, but the chances are even smaller than previously thought , according to a study conducted at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
The person responsible for the good news is physicist Richard Zeebe, who had the opportunity to work with the supercomputer Cray for six weeks in a row. Thus he made 1,600 simulations of the future of the Solar System, and in no such terrifying scenario took place. As Zeebe explains in The Astrophysical Journal , Earth's orbit will be very stable for at least the next 5 billion years.
Other previous models suggested that the gravitational pull of Jupiter could deviate the orbit of Mercury with fatal consequences , such as it colliding with Earth or deviating the trajectories of Mars or Venus towards our planet. For example, the astronomer Jacques Laskar, from the Paris Observatory, did 2,501 simulations in 2009 and in one of them the collision did occur.
Zeebe defends the precision of his study, although he concedes that Mercury could cause problems in a few hundred million years: in three of his simulations it would crash against the Sun and in seven it would have a fatal encounter with Venus , without affecting in any way to the earth.
