![kepler telescope glimpses freefloating planets kepler telescope glimpses freefloating planets](https://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/Kepler-telescope-500x298.jpg)
The prospect and opportunity of rogue planets is fascinating to me. This analysis, however, is reflective of older studies, which don't take into account certain factors that this paper does. > Within the context of this narrative, however, the remaining planets appear unaffected and are currently expected to remain stable for a lower limit of 10^18 years, when diffusion arising from the overlapping mean motion resonance of Jupiter and Saturn are expected to decouple Uranus. If you were around to witness the event, it might be visually spectacular, but not particularly significant with respect to the fate of the system itself. Mercury doesn't have enough mass to disrupt the center of gravity of the Solar System when it falls into the Sun, so, all that will happen is that the planet will get vaporized, and the Sun will become infinitesimally more enriched in metals. If Mercury collides with the Sun, not much interesting will happen. Intriguingly, General Relativistic effects factor into this estimate, with ancillary apsidal precession providing a stabilizing influence on Mercury’s orbit.
![kepler telescope glimpses freefloating planets kepler telescope glimpses freefloating planets](https://ras.ac.uk/sites/default/files/styles/media_demo_full_cropped/public/2021-06/A.%20Stelter%20-%20free-floating-planet.png)
> The mechanism forthe onset of Mercury’s instability is well understood: by virtue of locking into a linear secular resonance with theg5mode of the solar system’s secular solution, Mercury’s eccentricity can attain near-unity values, resulting in a collision with the Sun, or even Venus. Interestingly, the paper I linked talks about Mercury having a 1% chance of becoming unstable before the Sun enters its red giant phase: The Sun will swell so much that it engulfs the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars), so, Earth won't even be around to become destabilized.
![kepler telescope glimpses freefloating planets kepler telescope glimpses freefloating planets](https://researchnews.cc/imagenes/2021/07/06/Kepler-2.jpg)
Ejection of the gas giants doesn't even take place until after the Sun has gone into its red giant phase.