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Comment by aurareturn | Hacker News Reader

The OP’s second point is that you would change the gravitational balance of the solar system if you disassemble mercury.

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Funny thought - want to solve global warming? Disassemble Mercury! Earth's orbit in theory would space a bit further out

Ever heard of the 3 body problem? No way we can reliably model that.

Was a joke :)

So that isn't true. The 3 body problem is a problem in theory and extreme situations, not practice.

We discovered half the planets by doing the math to predict the orbits based on the known distribution of math in the solar system.

General Relativity was initially validated by predicting mercury's orbit accurately.

> known distribution of math in the solar system.

And mass as well :)

3 body problem: orbital decay when there are three orbiting bodies of SIMILAR MASS.

Mercury is not similar mass to the sun, so this is not the three body problem

GPT4 seems to think it is a 3 body problem. Mercury and Earth are of similar size and exert gravitational effects on each other. Take away mercury and maybe the earth slowly drifts a little.

The point is that a very small difference in starting conditions yield wildly different results.

GPT4 is an idiot. It actually cancels out over the orbit for small objects

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...

Okay but if you kept all that mass inside of Earth's orbit then you would not change the center of gravity, and Earth's orbit wouldn't change.

You can keep it in the same orbit but spread the mass out along the orbit to the other side and that changes the combined CoG to be closer to Sun's CoG in turn changing Earth's orbit, albeit probably slightly

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