B Can the Solar System's Chaos Lead to Earth's Sudden Demise?

[wolram]

Can anyone predict where the planets will be in 1 million years time, could the Earth be kicked out of orbit
a far quicker way to die than waiting for the sun to go nova?

 

[Arman777]

Can anyone predict where the planets will be in 1 million years time, could the Earth be kicked out of orbit
a far quicker way to die than waiting for the sun to go nova?

Why do you think like that ?

Sun will die about 4.5 billion years later so I don't think anything will happen.

 

[davenn]

Can anyone predict where the planets will be in 1 million years time

yes, there are computer programs that can do that

Why do you think like that ?

Sun will die about 4.5 billion years later so I don't think anything will happen.

indeed

in the full lifetime of the Sun and the rest of the solar system, a million years is less than a tick of the second hand of the time clock

 

[tony873004]

Size, shape and orientation of the orbit will probably be pretty accurate after 1 million years. Position on this orbit will not. That's because a small error in semi-major axis will lead to a small error in period, which will lead to a small error in position. Year after year, this error builds.

 

[Filip Larsen]

There has been some work examining the stability of the solar system that you may want to take a peek at. The references on that Wikipedia article refer to some recent numerical experiments by Laskar that goes into much more detail of the findings. Also referenced is a more accessible overview of the stability of the solar system, also by Laskar, which appears to be a good overview of the topic.

 

[Vanadium 50]

"Kicked out of orbit" is incredibly unlikely, especially ithing only a million years. Note that we have gone 4000x as long since the Late Heavy Bombardment.

 

[wolram]

Thank you for all the replies, I will have to spend some time looking at these papers.