Posted in: 14/07/2022 – 10:32
Scientists have warned that if a passing star passes just 0.1% of Neptune’s orbit, the resulting chaos could cause other planets in our solar system to collide.
We often forget that our solar system revolves around the center of the Milky Way at great speed and that there are many other celestial bodies around it.
In this context, new scientific research indicated that “stellar flight”, a relatively common event in the universe, could be enough to smash our planets together.
Scientists Garrett Brown and Hanno Ren, of the University of Toronto, studied the odds of this event, and found that if the gravity of a passing star interfered by 0.1% with the orbits of some planets, it would cause devastating chaos.
The study found that another star approaching a distance of 37 billion kilometers with the sun could threaten our entire solar system. This may seem like a great distance, but the star closest to us today is about 40 trillion kilometers away.
Fortunately, the destruction of the solar system, if it happened, would take billions of years.