Last night I had the strangest dream. NASA was involved in trying to change the trajectory of a comet. Most of our comets originate out in the Kuiper Belt, far, far away. However there is some speculation that these comets somehow keep the Solar System’s gravity in check. It’s a sort of self-regulatory system. NASA was trailing one of these comets (as they have actually recently done) and accidentally knocked the comet out of it’s normal orbit. Instead of the usually figure eight around the Sun and around the Kuiper Belt, the comet was moved to the next closest star Alpha Centari.
A few months later it was made known by scientists that the orbit of the planets was going to disintegrate and that instead of orbiting around the sun like normal all the planets would drift out into space. There was nothing we could do about it. The world’s best scientists and politicians were selecting a lottery system for those that would be launched on the most sophisticated space craft to the nearest star system where they would hopefully be able to make a home. It was humanity’s last hope.
I remember the figure eight figured largely into the dream as I was watching CNN they kept emphasizing the figure eight orbit and how we had destroyed it accidentally. The new orbit was more of a normal ellipse or circle orbit but with no clear boundaries. The orbits just kept decaying more and more in the ellipse until all the planets were out in empty space just floating lifelessly. The process happened fairly quickly and only left us a few decades to figure out what to do.