Ceres and Vesta's chaotic orbits affect the earth. A problem for paleoclimatologists.
Numerical simulations of the long-term evolution of the orbits of minor planets Ceres and Vesta, which are the largest bodies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, have been found to affect their large neighbors and the Earth in a way that had not been anticipated.
Ceres and Vesta gravitationally interact together and with the other planets of the Solar System. These effects do not average out. Consequently, the bodies leave their initial orbits and their orbits are chaotic, meaning that we cannot predict their positions.
The two bodies also have a significant probability of impacting each other, estimated at 0.2% per billion years.
Ceres and Vesta gravitationally interact with the Earth, whose orbit also becomes unpredictable after only 60 million years.
This means that the Earth's eccentricity, which affects the large climatic variations on its surface, cannot be traced back more than 60 million years, a serious problem for Paleoclimate studies.
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