In the 17th century, most astronomers wondered if our solar system would ever disappear. Much later, at the end of the 20th century, specifically in the year 1999, scientists ventured to suggest that this catastrophic event would very possibly take place within a trillion years. Nevertheless, More recent studies have revealed that the Sun and the solar system could disappear much sooner, within about 5,000 million years.
But what about the Earth? For those who are concerned about the fate of our planet, scientists from the University of Sofia (Bulgaria) have sent a reassuring message: they affirm that it is very unlikely that the Earth will be launched into deep space as a consequence of the chaotic behavior of the solar system in the next 100,000 years.
Representation of all the planets of the solar system.
Photo: iStock
The stability of the solar system
Along these lines, researchers Angel Zhivkov and Ivaylo Tounchev from the Department of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Sofia have developed a mathematical model (published in arXivan online archive for scientific paper preprints) that guarantees the stability of our solar system, and that states that Earth and the other planets, including the dwarf planet Pluto, will not be thrown out of their orbits and they will not become “rogue” planets. In any case, although it is usual for planets in motion to remain in their orbits, scientists believe that there is a possibility that planetary systems may reorganize themselves and even planetary migrations may occur, such as the one that would have occurred in the case of the outer planets of the Solar System (those located beyond the asteroid belt) at the time of their creation.
Scientists believe that there is a possibility that planetary systems may reorganize themselves and even planetary migrations may occur.
There are other worlds in other solar systems.
Photo: NASA
But what is a planetary migration? It is an event that happens when a planet in orbit around a star interacts with a disk of gas or planetesimal (an object made up of dust, rock and other materials from space) that ends up affecting their orbits. Thus, according to the so-called Nice model, a theoretical scenario that analyzes from a computer model the processes that could lead to the formation and evolution of the solar system as we know it today, the most widely accepted explanation is that the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) migrated from their orbits generating real chaos in the inner rocky worlds (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), possibly displacing or even “swallowing” protoplanets (extremely small planets) in the process.
In fact, the issue of the stability of the solar system is a question that has been the subject of numerous investigations. The planets that compose it have remained stable since they are observed by astronomers, but they know that the gravitational effects of one on another, however weak and insignificant they may be, can unpredictably alter their long-term behavior. Thus, although the solar system is stable in periods that far exceed those of a human life, the research carried out by the Bulgarian specialists concludes that, in fact, we can rest easy: Earth and the rest of the planets will not be fired into deep space anytime soon. At the same time, the calculations carried out in the new study have made it possible to determine that the solar system could be stable for at least a million years. Likewise, the authors of the study conclude that if technologies still under development were incorporated, it could even be possible to affirm that the stability of the solar system will possibly not be altered during the next five billion years.
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