Chaos is the mode of operation for the universe. That makes the accuracy and precision of orbit modeling beyond a certain amount of time nearly impossible.
A new study suggests our predictions about the path of objects circling the sun may not go as far as previously thought.
In a chaotic system, tiny fluctuations add up to major impacts over a long period of time.
The paper from the Planetary Research Institute in Tucson suggests simulations of orbits in the solar system are only accurate up to about 50 million years, past or future. Previous models predicted up to about 100 million years.
Anything beyond that requires statistical analysis.
That is according to researcher Nathan Kaib. His paper examined the effect of passing stars.
“Because that's what really happens when we orbit around in our Milky Way Galaxy. And so we started to do that and we found that it actually increases the amount of chaos in our solar system," he said.
Kaib said previous research focused on the solar system in isolation.
"For a lot of purposes it is fine. But when you start to really get into, think about very subtle effects, our solar system isn't actually isolated. So we wanted to see what happens to the predictions of these models when we throw stars at the solar system," Kaib said.
The study was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
