論Elon Musk的特斯拉千萬年間與太陽系星體的相撞概率

記得Elon Musk發(fā)推說特斯拉可能會在軌道上待上個數(shù)十億年么,各種新聞還就按照這數(shù)字轉(zhuǎn)載了呢。個人感覺Musk這數(shù)字只是隨口一說,甚至都沒怎么進(jìn)行過估算,單純因?yàn)樾求w碰撞是小概率時(shí)間就給了個很長的時(shí)間吧。而如果我們真的算一算,結(jié)果又會是怎么樣呢?
是的,這是一篇正兒八經(jīng)的學(xué)術(shù)論文喲(雖然更像是天文學(xué)家興趣【無聊】的產(chǎn)物),不是標(biāo)題黨喲~(雖然不是我寫的就是了)今天早上看到這篇論文之間笑出聲。有興趣的可以去arxiv上看原文哈,arxiv id:1802.04718v1
原文的標(biāo)題為 The random walk of cars and their collision probabilities with planets,下面為原文的摘要:
ABSTRACT
On February 6th, 2018 SpaceX launched a Tesla Roadster on a Mars-crossing orbit. We perform N-body simulations to determine the fate of the object over the next several million years, under the relevant perturbations acting on the orbit. The orbital evolution is initially dominated by close encounters with the Earth. The first close encounter with the Earth will occur in 2091. The repeated encounters lead to a random walk that eventually causes close encounters with other terrestrial planets and the Sun. Long-term integrations become highly sensitive to the initial conditions after several such close encounters. By running a large ensemble of simulations with slightly perturbed initial conditions, we estimate the probability of a collision with Earth and Venus over the next one million years to be 6% and 2.5%, respectively. We estimate the dynamical lifetime of the Tesla to be a few tens of millions of years.
Key words: methods: numerical — gravitation — planets and satellites: dynamical evolution and stability
大意來說就是spaceX在2月6號發(fā)射了一輛特斯拉進(jìn)入越火星軌道,根據(jù)現(xiàn)有的軌道觀察,作者們進(jìn)行了未來軌道的數(shù)值模擬。因?yàn)?091會出現(xiàn)的第一次近鄰地球以及未來會出現(xiàn)的數(shù)次近鄰行星,所以長期的軌道預(yù)測會是典型的初值敏感問題(說混沌或者蝴蝶效益的話可能明白的人更多)。為此,多個初值微擾的情況下做了長期數(shù)值模擬,并已最后的統(tǒng)計(jì)結(jié)構(gòu)對特斯拉在未來數(shù)百萬年間會與其他太陽系主要星體碰撞的概率作了預(yù)測。其中一百萬年內(nèi)碰撞發(fā)生概率在2.5%至6%之間,預(yù)計(jì)特斯拉從力學(xué)學(xué)角度來看的壽命會達(dá)數(shù)千萬年。
另外附上文章內(nèi)結(jié)論的圖,碰撞概率作為時(shí)間的函數(shù)。

看起來,雖然Musk只是隨口一說,離好好的計(jì)算結(jié)果相差也不是特別遠(yuǎn)呢~(兩個數(shù)量級放在天文研究里面只能算正常的誤差)
你覺得這種研究是不是很有趣呢?還是顯得很奇葩呢?評論區(qū)寫下你的感想吧。