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BBC reports on simulations run by astronomers suggesting we could see some planets collide in a billion years or so.

What’s fun is that you can actually ATTEMPT to run these computations in Wolfram|Alpha.  Here’s mercury in 1 billion years. Unfortunately the one thing I want to be able to show is the orbits of the planets and that is pushing W|A to the heuristic timing limit.

I can put this into Mathematica and work it out using more local CPU power.  Then again, I like just playing with numbers to see where I can take this.  Here’s Mercury at 199,999 years.  Things get gnarly.