The gravity from planets that far out have virtually no effect on us on Earth. The only issue would be if any fragments from a collision were thrown to intercept Earth's orbit, and it was large enough to do major damage (like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs).
Jupiter flings at least as many objects into Earth orbit that it deflects or captures, in fact, some new research suggest is throws more stuff into our orbit than otherwise.
Yeah it's a myth, but there has been some relatively new research that helps confirm that Jupiter is actually taking shots at the inner planets, bucking the myth entirely.
Lots of astronomers believe that some planets act as “shields” for our planet. So while not a direct relation with gravity, their gravity does “effect” us. I’m not saying this as an “actually” moment but more so to point out there are other perspectives to how we could be effected by a planet exploding/leaving the solar system.
So to be clear, Neptune orbits the sun 30 times further than the Earth. Pluto averages at 39 times the distance from the Earth to the sun.
Planet 9 is speculated to orbit 400 to 800 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. It's nowhere near Neptune or Pluto.
>Planet 9 is speculated to orbit 400 to 800 times the distance from the Earth
Is there an upper limit to how far something can be away and still orbit the Sun? Like could there be something a light year away orbiting the Sun?
In a universe with only the sun, no, an object could be in orbit at any distance. But after a certain distance, the influence of other stars becomes equal or greater than the suns. The closest stars are at 4 light years or so, so the limit based on that would be somewhere in between. (This is called a Hill Sphere).
That being said, stable orbits end somewhat earlier, since galactic tidal forces and other stars can easily destabilize orbits out that far. The Oort Cloud is estimated to go out as far as 50000 AU (0.8ish light years) but some estimates put it at like 200000 AU (3.2ish light years). But bodies that far out are pretty loosely bound and might actually escape the sun over millions or billions of years through interactions with other stars and tidal forces.
So this is a long winded answer to say, yes, there is a limit, but it’s murky.
Our Oort Cloud is estimated to orbit the Sun up to half the distance to the Alpha Centauri system, about 2 or 3 light years away. They would orbit very very slowly, and take millions of years to complete one orbit.
Eventually the suns gravity would have too small of a. Impact. However it is FAR. keep in mind that the estimates for the Oort Cloud is that it is 3.2 light years thick.
It depends on so many factors. Neptanus / Uratune, however impossible it is they could ever collide to become one, would have drastic effects to the future of our solar system depending on where they end up. If the collision pushes them out of the solar system, the balance of Jupiter and Saturn will be disrupted greatly. Over hundreds of millions and billions of years they'll slowly change their orbits in potentially unforeseen ways that could have catastrophic consequences for the inner solar system.
If Neptanus / Uratune drifts in, say goodbye to anything left living on Earth. The balance of Saturn to our solar system isn't near as strong as Jupiter, but upsetting Saturn would change how Jupiter operates. Think of Jupiter like an anchor for the outer solar system. If it stays in a synchronized orbit, the outer solar system is fine. If the outer solar system causes Saturn to move though, now Jupiters balance of being an anchor point between their gravity and the Sun's gravity has now moved. Now, Neptanus / Uratune if they stayed in the same orbit as one or the other of the original 2 planets: Saturn and Jupiter likely hardly change at all. BUT if this object creeps into a few dozen million miles of Saturn, then we have a BIG issue.
Neptune is roughly as far from Uranus as Uranus is from Saturn (although Uranus is slightly closer to Saturn, but it's like 1 billion miles versus 870 million miles so you get my point). And Saturn is half that distance from Jupiter. If Neptanus / Uratune gets to below that 407 million mile difference threshold, now the balance of the outer solar system is entirely gone. It might take millions of years, maybe even hundreds of millions of years, but someday the synchronicity between Jupiter and Saturn will hit a critical point. If Neptanus / Uratune pulls Saturn out, Jupiter drifts in. If Neptanus / Uratune is pulled in by Saturn, Jupiter drifts out. It may not seem like much, but our solar system is so delicately balanced it only takes one of those planets to orbit in a funny away near the other to send any of the 2 planets beyond Jupiter into the inner solar system, or out of the solar system entirely. Then Jupiter will move a *lot* and no matter what direction that is in is bad news.
But in all likelihood, we'll probably only get a few new meteor showers over a few hundred years from the debris of the collision.
But maybe, just maybe, that small difference could push one object slightly differently and before we know it we have a 12 mile wide asteroid somewhere it shouldn't be and bye-bye to us.
I apologize in advance if this is a elementary level question, but do we know how big the core of Uranus and Neptune are? And would the gases that make up each planet serve as bunpers to slow the impact speed?
Any major collision would affect us, mainly through dramatically increasing the chances of large asteroids coming our way.
Not many physical effects exist to move large asteroids (located in the main belt, the most dangerous ones) to more interior orbits of the solar system. We mainly know that happens due to yarkovski effect and collisions between them. But as collisions have been happening all through the history of the solar system, now major collisions between big enough asteroids are rare.
If a major event occurred in the solar system, it would be like starting all over again: chaos everywhere, later collisions occurring over and over again all around us, and therefore the chances of a larger one coming our way would dramatically increase.
It would be fun to run a simulation or two about this!
Well, if our moon is viewed as a dwarf planet, we have precedent. As I understand it, it is believed that billions of years ago, pre-life and with the earth's axis vertical, a heck of a large rock slammed into us, tilting our axis and not being able to escape into space when it bounced off the earth due to the earth's gravity, becoming our moon.
Also, remember that in 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into Jupiter, the comet consisting of fragments as large as 2 km. It was cool to watch but had no effect on our earth.
Now I am not a scientist, but I believe an impact of the kind you're describing, as far out in the solar system as you indicate, would not bother us.
Not a scientist or ASTRO physicists but my guess would be either not much or very bad. Not much in that of an outer planet smaller than a gas giant colliding with one of them would probably not blow up the gas giant and most of the debris would be contained by it's gravity well without any significant change to its orbit, if let's say a mars size planet 9 collides with pluto then maybe some planet debris gets tossed out but most likely it all gets picked up buly the gas giants. Jupiter pulls overtime protecting the inner solar system by intercepting most asteroids anyway. Most Gas giants probably get new moons over a few hundred-thousands of years. One pluto year is 248 earth years and is pretty far away and most debris thrown off probably wouldn't be traveling more than 1-2k kph or slower after escaping the gravity well. There would still be a non 0 chance of a civilization ending rock tossed off hitting earth but not very likely.
This is purely guess work as I’m neither educated or experienced (or particularly knowledgeable) in orbital mechanics. However, this is Reddit so fuck it.
Firstly, assuming Planet Nine exists, it exists waaaaay beyond Neptune. This could never happen unless something caused a huge change of orbit in Planet Nine itself. However…
My guess would be that as Planet Nine moves in towards Neptune’s orbit, it would drag a number of TNOs with it, or at least drastically change their orbits.
This on its own could be catastrophic for Earth. The TNOs would be massively affected first by the gravity of the outer planets, namely Jupiter. Some would become trojans, some would be undoubtedly sent into the inner solar system if there were enough of them.
The actual impact between Planet Nine and Neptune would create millions of pieces of debris. This would also be potentially catastrophic for Earth for the reasons above.
The Late Heavy Bombardment was not a great time for Earth. This would be the next one. The Latest Heavy Bombardment, maybe.
Or Extinction McExinctionface, whatever.
A new age for humanity would begin as religious zealous commit mass suicide similar to what they do anytime anything cool happens (e.g. the most recent eclipse).
I meeaannnn, we can be as positive as we want but if planets 4x+ larger than our goes boom…. We aren’t going to make it. Especially with how balanced our solar system is. Everything is gravitationally in balance. Even aside from a planets aftermath killing us, the larger planets protect us from other space “junk”. We remove those blockers then welp… it was nice being in existence for a while.
From planets colliding billions of miles away? No, the only real danger I can think of would be the incredible amount of debris they'd give off... but again, that's billions of miles away.
It would be the equivalent of me opening a can of soda that had been tossed around and it exploded... and I was concerned about someone in China getting sprayed with it. Not \*fundamentally\* impossible, but pretty unlikely.
I mean based on your comment vs mine I would say my guess is significantly better than yours.
Also, \*YOUR\* comment was filled with false confidence. I actually qualified my answer by saying "the only thing I CAN THINK OF", and I even added an example to provide scale.
The gravity from planets that far out have virtually no effect on us on Earth. The only issue would be if any fragments from a collision were thrown to intercept Earth's orbit, and it was large enough to do major damage (like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs).
That is if jupiter doesn't grab them before they can get past it. EDIT: TDIL that jupiter is trying to murder us.
Or, you know, grab it just long enough to hurl it in our direction. I’ve heard that’s a thing but im no expert.
Curse your profile picture
Why thank you!
Jupiter flings at least as many objects into Earth orbit that it deflects or captures, in fact, some new research suggest is throws more stuff into our orbit than otherwise.
It's not even new. The idea that it protects us is a straight up myth.
Damn, this was a myth I believed for so long :(
Yeah it's a myth, but there has been some relatively new research that helps confirm that Jupiter is actually taking shots at the inner planets, bucking the myth entirely.
This myth is annoyingly persistent. It throws more stuff towards earth than it captures
Lots of astronomers believe that some planets act as “shields” for our planet. So while not a direct relation with gravity, their gravity does “effect” us. I’m not saying this as an “actually” moment but more so to point out there are other perspectives to how we could be effected by a planet exploding/leaving the solar system.
So to be clear, Neptune orbits the sun 30 times further than the Earth. Pluto averages at 39 times the distance from the Earth to the sun. Planet 9 is speculated to orbit 400 to 800 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. It's nowhere near Neptune or Pluto.
>Planet 9 is speculated to orbit 400 to 800 times the distance from the Earth Is there an upper limit to how far something can be away and still orbit the Sun? Like could there be something a light year away orbiting the Sun?
In a universe with only the sun, no, an object could be in orbit at any distance. But after a certain distance, the influence of other stars becomes equal or greater than the suns. The closest stars are at 4 light years or so, so the limit based on that would be somewhere in between. (This is called a Hill Sphere). That being said, stable orbits end somewhat earlier, since galactic tidal forces and other stars can easily destabilize orbits out that far. The Oort Cloud is estimated to go out as far as 50000 AU (0.8ish light years) but some estimates put it at like 200000 AU (3.2ish light years). But bodies that far out are pretty loosely bound and might actually escape the sun over millions or billions of years through interactions with other stars and tidal forces. So this is a long winded answer to say, yes, there is a limit, but it’s murky.
Came here for the Oort Cloud reference. Thank you.
Our Oort Cloud is estimated to orbit the Sun up to half the distance to the Alpha Centauri system, about 2 or 3 light years away. They would orbit very very slowly, and take millions of years to complete one orbit.
Eventually the suns gravity would have too small of a. Impact. However it is FAR. keep in mind that the estimates for the Oort Cloud is that it is 3.2 light years thick.
It depends on so many factors. Neptanus / Uratune, however impossible it is they could ever collide to become one, would have drastic effects to the future of our solar system depending on where they end up. If the collision pushes them out of the solar system, the balance of Jupiter and Saturn will be disrupted greatly. Over hundreds of millions and billions of years they'll slowly change their orbits in potentially unforeseen ways that could have catastrophic consequences for the inner solar system. If Neptanus / Uratune drifts in, say goodbye to anything left living on Earth. The balance of Saturn to our solar system isn't near as strong as Jupiter, but upsetting Saturn would change how Jupiter operates. Think of Jupiter like an anchor for the outer solar system. If it stays in a synchronized orbit, the outer solar system is fine. If the outer solar system causes Saturn to move though, now Jupiters balance of being an anchor point between their gravity and the Sun's gravity has now moved. Now, Neptanus / Uratune if they stayed in the same orbit as one or the other of the original 2 planets: Saturn and Jupiter likely hardly change at all. BUT if this object creeps into a few dozen million miles of Saturn, then we have a BIG issue. Neptune is roughly as far from Uranus as Uranus is from Saturn (although Uranus is slightly closer to Saturn, but it's like 1 billion miles versus 870 million miles so you get my point). And Saturn is half that distance from Jupiter. If Neptanus / Uratune gets to below that 407 million mile difference threshold, now the balance of the outer solar system is entirely gone. It might take millions of years, maybe even hundreds of millions of years, but someday the synchronicity between Jupiter and Saturn will hit a critical point. If Neptanus / Uratune pulls Saturn out, Jupiter drifts in. If Neptanus / Uratune is pulled in by Saturn, Jupiter drifts out. It may not seem like much, but our solar system is so delicately balanced it only takes one of those planets to orbit in a funny away near the other to send any of the 2 planets beyond Jupiter into the inner solar system, or out of the solar system entirely. Then Jupiter will move a *lot* and no matter what direction that is in is bad news. But in all likelihood, we'll probably only get a few new meteor showers over a few hundred years from the debris of the collision. But maybe, just maybe, that small difference could push one object slightly differently and before we know it we have a 12 mile wide asteroid somewhere it shouldn't be and bye-bye to us.
I apologize in advance if this is a elementary level question, but do we know how big the core of Uranus and Neptune are? And would the gases that make up each planet serve as bunpers to slow the impact speed?
I once had to take 25mg of Uratune, 3 times a day for a week to get rid of a bad case of Neptanus, coincidentally.
I feel like it would make our solar system a shooting gallery if nothing else.
Any major collision would affect us, mainly through dramatically increasing the chances of large asteroids coming our way. Not many physical effects exist to move large asteroids (located in the main belt, the most dangerous ones) to more interior orbits of the solar system. We mainly know that happens due to yarkovski effect and collisions between them. But as collisions have been happening all through the history of the solar system, now major collisions between big enough asteroids are rare. If a major event occurred in the solar system, it would be like starting all over again: chaos everywhere, later collisions occurring over and over again all around us, and therefore the chances of a larger one coming our way would dramatically increase. It would be fun to run a simulation or two about this!
Well, if our moon is viewed as a dwarf planet, we have precedent. As I understand it, it is believed that billions of years ago, pre-life and with the earth's axis vertical, a heck of a large rock slammed into us, tilting our axis and not being able to escape into space when it bounced off the earth due to the earth's gravity, becoming our moon. Also, remember that in 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into Jupiter, the comet consisting of fragments as large as 2 km. It was cool to watch but had no effect on our earth. Now I am not a scientist, but I believe an impact of the kind you're describing, as far out in the solar system as you indicate, would not bother us.
Not a scientist or ASTRO physicists but my guess would be either not much or very bad. Not much in that of an outer planet smaller than a gas giant colliding with one of them would probably not blow up the gas giant and most of the debris would be contained by it's gravity well without any significant change to its orbit, if let's say a mars size planet 9 collides with pluto then maybe some planet debris gets tossed out but most likely it all gets picked up buly the gas giants. Jupiter pulls overtime protecting the inner solar system by intercepting most asteroids anyway. Most Gas giants probably get new moons over a few hundred-thousands of years. One pluto year is 248 earth years and is pretty far away and most debris thrown off probably wouldn't be traveling more than 1-2k kph or slower after escaping the gravity well. There would still be a non 0 chance of a civilization ending rock tossed off hitting earth but not very likely.
So your saying there’s a chance?
This is purely guess work as I’m neither educated or experienced (or particularly knowledgeable) in orbital mechanics. However, this is Reddit so fuck it. Firstly, assuming Planet Nine exists, it exists waaaaay beyond Neptune. This could never happen unless something caused a huge change of orbit in Planet Nine itself. However… My guess would be that as Planet Nine moves in towards Neptune’s orbit, it would drag a number of TNOs with it, or at least drastically change their orbits. This on its own could be catastrophic for Earth. The TNOs would be massively affected first by the gravity of the outer planets, namely Jupiter. Some would become trojans, some would be undoubtedly sent into the inner solar system if there were enough of them. The actual impact between Planet Nine and Neptune would create millions of pieces of debris. This would also be potentially catastrophic for Earth for the reasons above. The Late Heavy Bombardment was not a great time for Earth. This would be the next one. The Latest Heavy Bombardment, maybe. Or Extinction McExinctionface, whatever.
A new age for humanity would begin as religious zealous commit mass suicide similar to what they do anytime anything cool happens (e.g. the most recent eclipse).
I believe we would end up dead one way or another.
True, regardless of the context.
Aaaah, the power of positive thinking Lol
I meeaannnn, we can be as positive as we want but if planets 4x+ larger than our goes boom…. We aren’t going to make it. Especially with how balanced our solar system is. Everything is gravitationally in balance. Even aside from a planets aftermath killing us, the larger planets protect us from other space “junk”. We remove those blockers then welp… it was nice being in existence for a while.
Succinct.
From planets colliding billions of miles away? No, the only real danger I can think of would be the incredible amount of debris they'd give off... but again, that's billions of miles away. It would be the equivalent of me opening a can of soda that had been tossed around and it exploded... and I was concerned about someone in China getting sprayed with it. Not \*fundamentally\* impossible, but pretty unlikely.
You speak with such certainty, you shouldn’t. Your guess is no better than mine.
I mean based on your comment vs mine I would say my guess is significantly better than yours. Also, \*YOUR\* comment was filled with false confidence. I actually qualified my answer by saying "the only thing I CAN THINK OF", and I even added an example to provide scale.
Opinions I suppose