Is it true that Jupiter's orbit it changing Mercury's which may cause Mercury to crash into Venus?

Question

Is it true that Jupiter's orbit it changing Mercury's which may cause Mercury to crash into Venus?

Answer 1

My Bf says its possible, but he doesn't know.

Jupiter's gravity is larger than mercury's so it could have an effect and pull mercury towards it. He doesn't know if it is because they are far apart.

Answer 2

And I thought I had heard it all on Answers!

Answer 3

Absolutely not.

Not too long ago, we had an alignment of the planets, the great conjunction, that was suppose to have shifted the Earth's rotation.  Nothing to the Earth's rotation, but a lot of bad movies came out of that.

There is not enough gravitational force from Jupiter to affect Mercury's orbit from that distance.

Answer 4

I think that is unlikely after 4.5 billion years.  It does seem that in other solar systems Jupiter sized planets have migrated inwards toward the star and there is some reason to believe that early in our solar systems history some sort of orbital irregularities may have taken place.  My physics is far too old and rudimentary to comment on the few articles I've seen.  But I'm guessing that our inner solar system will remain as it has been for the next 5 billion years.  Then watch out!!

Answer 5

I think it is very unlikely. Jupiter and Mercury have been going round in their orbits for billions of years without colliding with anything.

The gravitational pull of Jupiter on Mercury is absolutely tiny compared with the main thing holding Mercury in its orbit - the pull of the Sun.

Answer 6

hey!!i hav not heard of that!!

but if that happens the world will probably end or something

Answer 7

You'll be dead by then. Don't worry.

Answer 8

Not at all!

Answer 9

NO

Jupiter is not able to supply Mercury with enough energy to increase its orbital radius to that of Venus.

The Sun, however, will in the distant future expand to red giant size and engulf Mercury and Venus, not because of Jupiter.

Answer 10

They're four planets apart. Why would Jupiter's gravity (you used the word orbit which makes no sense) change the course of Venus's gravity when there's closer planets to it? No sounds like bull.

Answer 11

No.

Answer 12

NO!

Answer 13

While Jupiter has a large gravitational field, it is very far away. At Earth, Jupiter's gravity is weaker than the gravity of your car. It's even weaker at Mercury, most of the time.

Mercury's orbit is subject to some "unstandard" changes due to gravity, but not because of Jupiter. Kepler's and Newton's laws fail to accurately predict Mercury's orbit because Mercury is so close to the Sun, that the orbit is changed by the effects of general relativity. This causes the direction of the elongation of Mercury's orbit to revolve around the Sun. This phenomenon is known as perihelion progression.

Jupiter is not going to sling Mercury into Venus in a cosmic game of dodgeball.

Answer 14

Maybe I'm the only answerer to have heard about this? A study of very long period perturbations of planets' orbits has come up with a possibility that Jupiter could cause Mercury's orbit to become sufficiently eccentric to bring it close to Venus and cause chaos in the inner solar system. It should be said that the possibility of this actually happening is reckoned to be 1 - 2% and we're talking a VERY long way into the future - millions, if not billions of years.

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/05/02/...