When you’re standing on Earth, it’s easy to forget that our planet is like that It hurtles around the sun at more than 67,000 mph (107,800 km/h). It is easier to forget that seven other planets are also making their way around our star at similarly dizzying speeds, or that all eight planets have been orbiting non-stop around the planet. Solar System For billions of years.
But what might really surprise you is how many trips each planet makes around the sun. This may seem like a difficult thing to calculate, but since the planets’ orbits have remained largely unchanged for most of their existence, all it takes is a little basic mathematics.
Related: What is the maximum number of planets that can orbit the Sun?
The solar system was born about 4.6 billion years ago, when the sun began to form from a cloud of dust left over from previous star explosions. About 4.59 billion years ago, the giant planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus And Neptune – were born. About 4.5 billion years ago, the smaller rocky planets – Mercury, VenusAnd the earth and Mars – crystallized, according to Planetary Society.
But when the planets were born, their orbits around the Sun were not what they are today (especially the orbits of the giant planets). About 100 million years after the first planets formed, there were “Dynamic instability“Among them, causing a tug of war between these large bodies and causing the rest of the planetary material of the outer solar system, and even some emerging protoplanets, to be ejected out of the solar system, Sean Raymondan astronomer at the Bordeaux Astrophysical Laboratory in France and an expert on planetary systems, told Live Science in an email.
However, once all the planets appear and finish jostling each other for their positions, they… They settled into fixed and stable orbits Which hasn’t changed much since then.
“For 98% to 99% of the life of the solar system, the orbits of the planets were good and stable,” Raymond said. As a result, he added, you can use the planets’ current orbital dynamics to make a very accurate guess at how many trips they have made around the sun.
Take Earth, for example. Our planet takes a year to orbit the Sun, and it has been around for 4.5 billion years, so it has taken approximately 4.5 billion trips around the solar system.
However, the number of total orbits varies greatly among the other planets because their years are either shorter or longer than Earth years.
Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, takes only 88 days (or approximately 0.24 years, based on a 365.25-day year) to orbit the Sun once. So, over the past 4.5 billion years, it has completed about 18.7 billion solar cycles. But Neptune, the farthest planet from the Sun, takes about 60,190 days (or 164.7 years) to complete its orbit, meaning it has only managed 27.9 million trips around the Sun in its 4.59 billion years of existence. This means that Mercury revolves around the Sun about 18.7 billion times more than Neptune.
Below is the complete list of planets, their respective All year long The total number of trips around the sun:
| planet | Age (billions of years) | Orbital period (days) | Number of total orbits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury | 4.5 | 88 | 18.7 billion |
| Venus | 4.5 | 225 | 7.3 billion |
| Land | 4.5 | 365.25 | 4.5 billion |
| Mars | 4.5 | 687 | 2.4 billion |
| Jupiter | 4.59 | 4,333 | 386.9 million |
| Saturn | 4.59 | 10,759 | 155.8 million |
| Uranus | 4.59 | 30.687 | 54.6 million |
| Neptune | 4.59 | 60,190 | 27.9 million |
These sound like impressive numbers (and they are), but most planets will likely be able to double the number of their orbits in their remaining lifetimes.
In about 4.5 billion years, it will be the sun It bulges outward to reach Earth’s orbit Moving to a red dwarf star will destroy Mercury, Venus and Earth. Other planets may survive for a while if they don’t burn up but their orbits will likely change dramatically.
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