Geophysicist Stephen Meyers of the University of Wisconsin in Madison (USA) admitted the collision of Earth and Mars after billions of years. Reported by Scientific American.
Meyers and his colleagues came to the conclusion that the solar system is a chaotic system, that is, its behavior is sensitive to changes in initial conditions. In this case, this means that even small changes in the Keplerian elements of the planet's orbit can provoke large changes in the dynamics of the entire system over a long period of time.
Scientists have managed to find traces of chaotic processes in the solar system. For this, experts, using geological data, tracked the changes in the luminous flux falling on the planet. The fluctuations in energy, in turn, are caused by changes in the elements of the planet's orbit and lead to climatic shifts.
Scientists have known that for the past 50 million years, the Earth's orbit has slightly changed its shape with a frequency of 2.4 million years. Climate changes were noted with about the same regularity. However, dating of samples found in Colorado showed that about 85 million years ago, the frequency was 1.2 million years.
Scientists linked the doubling of the frequency of climatic changes to the interaction of the Earth and Mars. In their opinion, a similar phenomenon is characteristic of chaotic systems.
In particular, this means that in the next billion years, the Earth and Mars, if they have not yet been destroyed by the Sun, may collide. Scientists, meanwhile, note that the likelihood of a disaster is extremely small.