Neil deGrasse Tyson Warns About Mercury's Precarious Orbit

Описание: Numerical simulations led by Jacques Laskar reveal Mercury as the nail-biter of the inner solar system. Neil deGrasse Tyson explains how Mercury's eccentricity can wander so high that, with small probability, it might hit the Sun or Venus—while Earth remains overwhelmingly stable on these timescales. Chaos is not catastrophe; it just means our predictive power fades with time. Look outward and the same rules write different stories: hot Jupiters scorch close to their stars, while resonant chains like TRAPPIST-1 balance on a knife's edge. Our system appears long-lived until the Sun's evolution takes over—but uncertainty is real. Understanding that difference shapes how we think about habitability and fate.