• Question: what would happen if the only planet was Earth ?

    Asked by anon-245791 to Sam, Samantha, Nicol, Lori-Ann, Liam, David on 16 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: David Sobral

      David Sobral answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      Many things would happen. We likely wouldn’t be in the same orbit. Also, without Jupiter, we would likely be bombarded by way more asteroids and have many more mass extinction events. Also we wouldn’t have the chance to observe and study the other planets!

    • Photo: Lori-Ann Foley

      Lori-Ann Foley answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      If the other planets hadn’t formed or had got knocked out the solar system when it was young, it would be a very different place here and we would be in a very different orbit going around the sun. So things on Earth would be very different. Most solar systems that we have found seem to have more than one planet, so it is likely that when a solar system forms, most of the material gets pulled into the sun and the rest clumps together to the form a number of planets. They then seem to jostle for position before settling down, so we get a solar system where the planets are in their places, like ours.

    • Photo: Samantha Faircloth

      Samantha Faircloth answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      Hello Raif, if Earth were all alone, we would have a lot of stability issues! Without the gravity of other planets (and our own Moon) the Earth would start to violently wobble! 🙂

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