There is a small chance that the Earth and Venus could collide in the next 5 billion years (Illustration: J Vidal-Madjar/NASA/IMCCE-CNRS)
THE solar system’s clockwork motion is by no means guaranteed: one day the Earth could collide with Venus or tear Mars apart in a close encounter, a new simulation has shown.
We know that the apparently reliable orbits of the planets are unstable in the long run, because their weak gravitational effects on one another can add up in unpredictable ways. Technically, the system is chaotic. Could this very mild chaos lead to disaster?
Mercury…
