Could we survive the solar system's most extreme and chaotic environments?

Space · Published 23 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: From planets where it rains sapphires to worlds with molten floors, the cosmos is full of death traps. While these environments seem impossible to inhabit, engineers are already drafting blueprints and researching technologies to tackle the very real challenges of space colonization.

The universe is home to staggering extremes. In our own solar system, Mercury experiences a brutal temperature swing, reaching 43 and dropping to -180°C. Further afield, the exoplanet HAT-P-7b, located over 1,000 light-years away, orbits its star in just two Earth days; its atmosphere is so dense and hot that it may produce sapphire rain. Scientists even contemplate 'rogue planets'—frigid, starless worlds where nothing ever changes. Beyond these distant exoplanets, researchers at New Scientist Live even explored the concept of a manufactured nightmare. This hypothetical world would combine intense radiation, acid rain, and extreme winds with a surface of molten lava.

The stability of our own neighborhood is also not guaranteed. Research published in Physical Review Letters suggests that the solar system is inherently chaotic. Beyond a window of a few tens of millions of years, predicting planetary motion becomes impossible. Simulations of the Sun's remaining 5 billion years show a 1% chance that Mercury's orbit could become so eccentric that it eventually collides with Venus or the Sun. To study these unpredictable movements, scientists utilize supercomputers to run probabilistic simulations of various possible paths. Interestingly, researchers Eric Woillez and Freddy Bouchet have demonstrated that Mercury's potential destabilization can be modeled using a simpler computational method known as an instanton.

Despite these horrors, the path to colonization is being mapped. While some solutions remain in the realm of science fiction, others are already being developed in research labs. The goal is to move beyond seeing these worlds as mere lists of failures and instead view them as engineering problems to be solved through technological advancement.

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