Doomsday theories have long suggested that a giant asteroid could crash into the Earth, and that such an impact would have a devastating impact on the planet. But what if an asteroid wasn’t the space rock that humanity needed to be most concerned about?
According to Science, there exists an apocalyptic scenario suggesting that Mercury could one day collide with the Earth, wiping out all life on the planet. Fortunately, newly published work led by University of Hawaii, Manoa physicist Richard Zeebe, has revealed that such a possibility is far less likely than previously believed.
As part of his research, which appeared in the September 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, Zeebe used a Cray supercomputer that had just been purchased by his university to run a total of 1,600 simulations of our solar system’s future – each with Mercury in a different position.
None of those simulations ended with the two planets colliding over a span of five billion years, the study author explained. He concluded that our planet’s orbit is highly stable over that period of time, and that the odds of another world crashing into Earth are, shall we say, astronomical.
Earth may (or may) not be safe, but Mercury could be in trouble
However, not everyone agrees that mankind and breathe easy. Jacques Laskar, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory would previously was part of a team that conducted a greater number of computer simulations (over 2,500) and found that Earth may be susceptible to massive collisions, said that Zeebe did not run enough simulations to discover such a rare occurrence.
“It’s like if someone was in a lake, he fished for two hours, he says, ‘I don’t find any fish, so there are no fish in this lake,’ ” Laskar told Science. In response Zeebe said that while he conducted less simulations, his more effectively tracked Mercury while it was moving at high speed, as happens when the planet is in an elongated orbit that brings it closer to the sun, the website said.
One point the two scientists do apparently agree on is that Mercury faces an uncertain future. In about one percent of both Laskar and Zeebe’s simulations, the planet ultimately acquires a highly elliptical orbit. In three instances, it wound up colliding with the sun, and in seven others, it hit Venus. While that event produced no adverse effects for Earth, “it would be quite a spectacle,” the University of hawaii physicist told Science.
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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