If Neptune Changes Orbit, Solar System Could End

• Researchers developed a set of about 3,000 simulations

• Scientists have found that if a star changes 0.1% of Neptune’s orbit it could be fatal

• Change could end the solar system as we know it

What would happen if a star approaches the solar system and only changes 0.1% in Neptune’s orbit? This would likely be the end of all planets, as they would all be kicked out of orbit, potentially colliding with each other.

Despite being stable, the complex balance that maintains the system maintained by the Sun is not immune to disaster. Researchers Garett Brown and Hanno Rein, from the University of Toronto, Canada, developed a set of about 3,000 simulations of possible changes in the orbits of planets to study the consequences of these scenarios.

“We found that small perturbations in the orbits of the outer planets are transferred between planets, increasing the likelihood that the inner planetary system will destabilize,” states the report drawn from the investigation.

Most of the simulations resulted in some sort of significant consequence for the solar system. About 960 possibilities analyzed by scientists did not give rise to changes that can be considered significant for the balance of our system.

“These weak perturbations don’t destroy the solar system right away, they just shake it up a little and it’s only over the next millions or billions of years that anything becomes unstable,” the researchers explained to New Scientist Rein.

However, simulations have shown that if Neptune changes just 0.1% of its orbit, it could cause numerous catastrophes, putting an end to the balance that exists between the planets and the Sun. Also according to Brown and Rein’s simulation, it was enough for a star to cross the solar system at about 23 billion kilometers away for the universe as we know it to never be the same again.