Can Mercury fall on the Sun and cause a global catastrophe as in the novel Dark Forest by Liu Cixin?
I received the following question from one of my subscribers:
In Liu Cixin’s novel The Dark Forest, this possible development of a planet falling into the Sun is addressed. Mercury. It will penetrate the convection zone at falling, the matter from the radiant transfer zone through this hole will escape with great velocity, and following the Sun’s rotation will form a gas spiral to the orbit of Mars, which will pull all planets in this zone behind it, and then by a chain reaction, Venus, Earth and Mars. The orbit of the gas cloud will reach the orbit of Jupiter, which will also slow down and fall into the Sun. Then all the planets in our system. Is this realistic, do you think?
First of all, I want to say that I have not read this book and I do not know exactly what the author described, but I can hardly imagine how Mercury can fall to the Sun in one piece without being torn into small pieces when crossing the Roche limit. Unless it was accelerated there to a decent speed in the direction of the Sun.
The fact is that as Mercury approaches the Sun, the following effect will occur — the half of Mercury that is closer to the Sun will be affected by a much greater force of the Sun’s attraction than the half that is farther from…
