A Beautiful Planet how you use those resources. It reminds us that we have to be better stewards of what we have, and be better crew members of Spaceship Earth." This portrayal of our planet as a fragile, life sustaining spacecraft is introduced in the very first scene. The film begins with a light-years-long, computer-generated trip through swarms of stars in the Milky Way; the compressed trip ends by focusing on the Solar System. Even though our planetary system seems unremarkable, it is in fact "the only place we know, in all the universe, to harbor life." In the film, Jennifer Lawrence's narration
Stability of the Solar System Stability of the Solar System The stability of the Solar System is a subject of much inquiry in astronomy. Though the planets have been stable when historically observed, and will be in the short term, their weak gravitational effects on one another can add up in unpredictable ways. For this reason (among others) the Solar System is chaotic, and even the most precise long-term models for the orbital motion of the Solar System are not valid over more than a few tens of millions of years. The Solar System is stable in human terms, and far beyond, given that it