• Question: Where will all the planets be in 10000 years

    Asked by to Edward, Ian, Mathew, Naomi, sakshisharda on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Edward Hughes

      Edward Hughes answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      Excellent question! Actually they’ll all be in quite different places to where they are now.

      Firstly in 10,000 years the sun will definitely still be around (it’s got billions of years of fuel left). So why will the planets have moved?

      Well it’s because of gravity. According to Albert Einstein, the planets don’t trace out the same path every time they go round the sun. Instead they deviate slightly, causing their orbits to shift.

      In 10,000 years time, Earth’s orbit will have shifted by roughly 10 degrees and Saturn’s by about 20 degrees.

      All this is assuming that no big asteroids hit any planets before then, but that’s quite unlikely.

    • Photo: Ian Stephenson

      Ian Stephenson answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      Pretty much exactly where they are at the moment. 10,000 years is a long time in human terms, but the earth is believed to be 4,500,000,000 years old so 10,000 years here or there makes no difference.

    • Photo: Naomi Osborne

      Naomi Osborne answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Good question, mjp2002!

      Like Ian’s mentioned, in 10,000 years there probably won’t be that much of a shift in positioning of our solar system.

      Scientists think the four giant planets will still be in the same orbits 5 billion years from now, which is when our sun is expected to balloon and engulf Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. They’re not so sure if these planets will still be around to die this way though.

Comments