Editing Earth's orbit (section)

==Future==
{{Main|Stability of the Solar System}}

Mathematicians and astronomers (such as [[Pierre-Simon Laplace|Laplace]], [[Joseph-Louis Lagrange|Lagrange]], [[Carl Friedrich Gauss|Gauss]], [[Henri Poincaré|Poincaré]], [[Kolmogorov]], [[Vladimir Arnold]], and [[Jürgen Moser]]) have searched for evidence for the stability of the planetary motions, and this quest led to many mathematical developments and several successive "proofs" of stability for the Solar System.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astropvhysics|editor-last=Murdin|editor-first=Paul|id=article 2198|last=Laskar|first=J.|title=Solar System: Stability|date=2001|publisher=[[Institute of Physics Publishing]]|location=Bristol}}</ref> By most predictions, Earth's orbit will be relatively stable over long periods.<ref>{{cite book|last=Gribbin|first=John|title=Deep simplicity : bringing order to chaos and complexity|date=2004|publisher=[[Random House]]|location=New York|isbn=978-1-4000-6256-0|edition=1st U.S.|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/deepsimplicitybr00grib}}</ref>

In 1989, [[Jacques Laskar]]'s work indicated that Earth's orbit (as well as the orbits of all the inner planets) can become chaotic and that an error as small as 15 meters in measuring the initial position of the Earth today would make it impossible to predict where Earth would be in its orbit in just over 100 million years' time.<ref>{{Cite news|url = http://www.news.com.au/national/earth-venus-smash-up-possible/story-e6frfkp9-1225732704812|title = Earth-Venus smash-up possible|date = June 11, 2009|access-date = Jan 22, 2015|archive-date = 23 January 2015|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150123024437/http://www.news.com.au/national/earth-venus-smash-up-possible/story-e6frfkp9-1225732704812|url-status = dead}}</ref> Modeling the Solar System is a subject covered by the [[n-body problem]].