Can Mercury hit Earth or Mars in the next 5 billion years? Mercury is the most unstable planet of the solar system, with an oscillating orbital eccentricity (between 0 to 0.45). It seems there is a 1% probability in the next 5 billion years Jupiter and Mercury might enter in a 1:1 orbital resonance.

The ending variants for this event are :


colliding with Venus
colliding with the Sun
being ejected from solar system.


Can it hit other targets on its way out of the solar system beside those enumerated, like Earth, Mars or the outer planets?
Yes, after a close encounter with other planets, almost anything can happen, including a split of Mercury into smaller bodies by tidal forces, or capturing as one or more moons of one or more planets, or a sequence of captures by, and escapes from planets, conversion to a ring of all or some of the fragments, collisions with other moons, fragments falling into the Sun, others ejected from the solar system.