[mattsan]

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

[prettyStandard]

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.

[mattsan]

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

[aurareturn]

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

[blamestross]

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.

[vitiral]

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

[mattsan]

Was a joke :)