When minor planets Ceres and Vesta rock the Earth into chaos
Quote:
Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a new study of the orbital evolution of minor planets Ceres and Vesta, a few days before the flyby of Vesta by the Dawn spacecraft. A team of astronomers found that close encounters among these bodies lead to strong chaotic behavior of their orbits, as well as of the Earth's eccentricity. This means, in particular, that the Earth's past orbit cannot be reconstructed beyond 60 million years.
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This means that the Earth's eccentricity, which affects the large climatic variations on its surface, cannot be traced back more than 60 million years ago. This is indeed bad news for Paleoclimate studies.
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.. also more evidence that points to our inability to rely on pure deterministic physics when speaking on evolutionary macro scale topics like predicting exo-life, the universe and many other things !
Cheers