Venus and Mars Could Slam into Earth

For a long time, people have hypothesized on the way our planet is going to eventually end up. While the science is clear, stating that, most likely, the Sun will engulf us as it swells up at the end of its burning cycle, others believe that our planet may end at the “hands” of a comet. A new theory, however, states that, on account of the subtle and faint gravitational interactions between Jupiter and Mercury, there's a small chance that Mars or Venus will be set on a collision course to Earth. Such an impact would be devastating, and would definitely erase all living things on our planet, except for entrenched bacteria.

An impact of this magnitude is believed to have been the triggering event behind the formation of the Moon, so a new one could result, if this remote possibility comes to completion. On the other hand, it would spell bad news for our planet, and for whoever may be inhabiting it at the time. In a series of computer simulations, Astronomers Jacques Laskar and Mickael Gastineau, both from the Institut de Mecanique Celeste et de Calcul des Ephemerides, in Paris, France, discovered that, in 99 percent of the cases, everything in the solar system ran smoothly.

However, in one percent of the 2,500 simulation runs, things got out of hand, and the main culprit was Jupiter, which acted steadily on Mercury's orbit, forcing it to wobble. Over millions of years, the inner planet could simply exit its established orbit, leading to the destabilization of the entire inner planet system, ScienceNow informs.

“Mercury's [orbital] eccentricity increases to large values, [and three to four billion years from now] a complete destabilization of the inner planets [may occur].” This could lead to either of our neighboring planets, Mars and Venus, ramming into Earth. Still, Laskar points out, “one is ensured that nothing will happen [in the next] 100 million years.”

The find, which was published today in the respected scientific journal Nature, raised some eyebrows, in that no one had anticipated this kind of outcome for the solar system. The researchers point out that it was collisions that helped shape the current planetary configuration around us, and point at the asteroid belt, which is made up of remains from planetary collisions, and from matter created by the Sun that did not make it into any planets.