⚠️The solar system may fall apart much sooner than expected

The Solar System’s eventual destruction may not be caused simply by the Sun expanding into a red giant.

A new study led by Caltech astrophysicist Konstantin Batygin suggests that as the Sun dies and sheds mass, its planets could be pushed into unstable orbits. Instead of smoothly drifting farther away, the planets may experience chaotic gravitational interactions and eventually scatter across space.

The simulations suggest the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune could become dynamically unstable roughly 1 billion years after the Sun becomes a white dwarf. Previous estimates placed the final breakup of the outer Solar System tens of billions of years later.

Earth, however, won’t be around to see it. The Sun is expected to enter its red-giant phase in roughly 5 billion years, with Mercury, Venus and likely Earth being destroyed or engulfed long before the outer planets face their final fate.

The unsettling part is that the Sun’s death may be far more chaotic than previously assumed, its final mass loss could effectively destabilize the planetary system it created.

@futurism 🧬