Risk of a star destroying the solar system is higher than expected

Stars whizzing by our solar system could cause more havoc than astronomers previously thought, from sending Pluto’s orbit haywire to forcing Mercury to fly into the sun – or even catastrophically altering Earth’s orbit and climate. The overall risk of these events is still low, but the greater influence of passing stars means that events like these might be commonplace in other planetary systems.

While the orbits of the planets were once thought to be as predictable and unchanging as clockwork, modern astronomers have found that on long timescales, they are…