SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

Report: Planets Will Collide in 5 Billion Years

from the San Francisco Chronicle

From chaos we all began, and to chaos we'll all return, but not for a very, very long time - 5 billion years or so, more or less.

In the journal Nature, two French scientists, using arcane mathematical models, predict that in the distant future, the Earth and planet after planet will collide with each other as an inevitable part of the solar system's long-term evolution.

For many millennia, the scientists say, the orbits of the solar system's eight planets will remain stable, just as they are today, but eventually small eccentricities in their flight paths around the sun could cause Mercury, Mars, Venus and Earth to smash into each other, either one at a time or all at once - the ultimate chaotic disaster.