(ORDO NEWS) — Life on planet Earth is beautiful and priceless, but it will almost certainly perish if the Earth deorbits and ends up outside the solar system.
According to experts, the Earth could be thrown out of orbit into deep space and drift until it is finally sucked into a black hole. This is reported by the Daily Star.
Aerospace engineer and space systems lecturer at the University of Glasgow, Matteo Keriotti, told Live Science: “It’s very unlikely,” but still possible.
“Earth can be shifted out of its orbit by a massive interstellar object flying through the solar system and passing close to Earth.
The earth and the object will exchange energy and the earth’s orbit will be disturbed.”
“If the object were fast, massive and close enough, then it could take the Earth out of the solar system.”
Timothy Davies, senior lecturer in physics and astronomy at Cardiff University, agreed, saying it’s possible the Earth could be ejected from the solar system, but he has a different idea of how that might happen.
He said: “The planets are in stable orbits around the Sun. However, if the Sun were to collide closely with another star, then the gravitational interactions of these bodies could disrupt these orbits and potentially eject the Earth from the solar system.”
He also made it clear that this scenario is possible, although unlikely.
“Such stellar collisions are quite rare. For example, we know that the star Gliese 710 will approach the Sun in about a million years, but even this flyby is unlikely to disturb the planets.”
Kerriotti believes that if the planets break away from the solar system, the consequences will be catastrophic.
“Earth will fly off into interstellar space until it is captured or consumed by another star or black hole,” he said, but made it clear that it still wouldn’t matter much, since life on Earth would probably have disappeared by then.
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