[trvlngwlbry]

I love the GIF in the article and how it was copyrighted in 2000 about an event that would happen in 2017. I'm a reader/follower of N. N. Taleb and agree with him about how difficult it is to predict future events. And meanwhile, the conditions in space and the laws of physics allow for a model like this to be made with what seems to be a lot of precision. Can anyone speak to how accurate/precise that GIF model _could've been_ in 2000?

[dekhn]

The ability to predict the locations of celestial objects to high accuracy is one of the pinnacles of modern science. The approach, called "ephemeris", is pretty straightforward- the entire solar system, with all of its components, is modelled using straightforward physics and math (Newton's law, with some relativistic corrections). We can accurately predict the location of all major celestial objects to hundreds of years in the future (barring some unknown external influence).

Every single time we send probes to other planets and they collect more data (such as the non-spherical shape of a planet or moon), that data is incorporated into the ephemeris calculations and they become that much more accurate.

Now, were a rare, unpredictable event to occur- say, a rogue star entering the solar system with low albedo so we couldn't see it coming- that would introduce a change in the dynamics of the system that we couldn't easily predict. it;s not exactly a "black swan" (to use taleb's nomenclature) because we know rogue stars exist.

The predictions aren't perfectly accurate. We don't have total knowledge of every element in the solar system (tiny asteroids affect the motion of the sun, in a very long term way) so the predictions eventually fall off in accuracy.

It's still a long term discussion whether the solar system is a truly chaotic system, but we'll leave that to JPL and Minsky.

[Analemma_]

You mean the gif of the eclipse path? We've had that capability for a while, it's just orbital mechanics. We know exactly when and where every eclipse is going to happen for the next several thousand years at least.