If you've ever worried that the planets of our solar system might one day drift away and be flung into the galaxy, you can put those fears to rest — at least for now.
According to new simulations, we’ve got at least another 100,000 years before anything like that might happen.
In a new study, mathematicians Angel Zhivkov and Ivaylo Tounchev from Sofia University in Bulgaria presented evidence suggesting that the solar system — including all eight planets and Pluto — will remain stable for the next 100,000 years.
Their calculations, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, show that the orbits of these bodies won’t significantly change over that time.
This may seem surprising, considering that the solar system has already existed for 4.5 billion years. But modeling and predicting its future behavior is far from simple.
Of course, many previous studies have attempted to simulate the solar system’s future using powerful computer systems to model the movement of planets over millions or billions of years.
However, covering such vast timeframes often overlooks small but potentially important details.
Zhivkov and Tounchev’s work focuses on a much shorter period compared to others, but as they argue, this increases the reliability of the results.
That’s because their model accounts for variations in initial conditions — such as orbital eccentricities and inclinations of the planets — as well as the masses of all solar system bodies.
The long-term fate of the solar system has puzzled scientists for centuries. Isaac Newton believed that the gravitational interactions between planets would eventually lead to chaos. Since then, the dynamic stability of our solar system over long timescales has remained an active topic of discussion.
The reason is that the more bodies a dynamic system has, the harder it is to predict its behavior. Modeling two objects orbiting each other is relatively simple. But as you add more, the math becomes increasingly complex, with each object influencing the others' orbits and introducing elements of chaos. This is known as the N-body problem.
In specific individual cases, solutions can be found, but there is no single formula that describes all possible interactions in an N-body system. And the solar system is highly complex, including not just the eight planets and the Sun, but also asteroids, dwarf planets, and many other smaller objects.
While it's usually safe to ignore the very small bodies, like asteroids, the system still contains many gravitationally significant components.
Solar System
Zhivkov and Tounchev created a numerical model that translates the orbital elements of the planets (and Pluto) into 54 first-order ordinary differential equations. They ran the calculations using a standard desktop computer, executing over 6,290,000 steps — each step corresponding to approximately six days.
Their results indicate that the configuration of interconnected elliptical orbits on which the planets revolve around the Sun will remain stable for at least the next 100,000 years. Each planet’s semi-major axis will vary by 1% or less.
In other words, the solar system isn’t gearing up for a game of galactic billiards anytime soon.
Even when the researchers altered initial conditions and planetary masses, their calculations showed the system remained stable. They suggest that this stability could last for millions or even billions of years. However, more powerful computing resources would be needed for higher-accuracy modeling.
Previous simulations estimate that the solar system would take around 100 billion years to fall apart and disperse across the galaxy.
By that time, the Sun will be long dead, having become a white dwarf. It's unlikely that humanity will still exist in the solar system by then — unless we’ve managed to relocate to another star system.
The paper is available on the preprint server arXiv.
Source: ScienceAlert
