Sistemul Solar s-ar putea destrăma cu mult mai devreme: noile simulări reduc radical estimările

Researchers suggest that planets may be expelled from the Solar System much sooner than previously thought, with instability potentially occurring before the Sun's death. A new study indicates that after the Sun becomes a white dwarf, outer planets like Jupiter and Saturn could be thrown into chaotic orbits or ejected into interstellar space. Previously, scientists believed the Solar System could remain stable for extremely long periods post-Sun's death, but this research proposes a survival time of only about one billion years. Simulations show that instability might arise even during the red giant phase of the Sun, which is expected to occur in about eight billion years. The findings echo historical hypotheses about the Solar System's gravitational balance being temporary, with Earth potentially becoming uninhabitable long before the Sun reaches its white dwarf stage.