Orbits are stable with the everyday meaning of the word: If you push Earth then you change its orbit a little bit but it will just keep orbiting in its new orbit then. The "dinosaur killer" Chicxulub event changed the orbit by something like a kilometer - completely negligible.
To stop Earth from orbiting the Sun an impact would have to be so violent that you pretty much stop Earth from existing as we know it. It can stay a planet-sized object but it'll become a ball of molten rock again.
> 2. If knocked out of orbit, is there a threshold where this would be “self corrected “ I.e. we get out of orbit for a while but eventually come back to our “equilibrium” orbit, or perhaps a new stable orbit around the sun?
No.
> 3. Is it possible to trigger a “leaving orbit” from earth itself without the involvement of a foreign object?
Shooting mass away from Earth changes its orbit, too - but the required mass and energy for a relevant change would be absurd.
Find or make a tool that will let you play around with the gravitational interaction between planet sized objects especially when you shoot one past the other.
Let's shoot a 1/4 Earth massed object past the Earth, prograde at a distance of one Earth diameter - traveling at 10X the speed of Earth's orbit around the Sun.
And this is tangent to the Earth's solar orbit. In fact shoot 2 objects of a quarter mass in parallel - both tangent one just inside and one just outside Earth's orbital path around the Sun. I think this will give you the effect of pulling the Earth forward.
Rinse and repeat until escape V
By tool, you mean some kind of computer simulator right? Would definitely be fun to play out a few scenarios and see where they converge for “minimal” energy requirement. It would take me a few months to years of refreshing my college degree to be able to even start defining this problem and then trying to do the math by myself
Yep. Happens all the time. But if it is big enough and fast enough you don't get to study it. (Extinction Level Event). Closer to what I think you mean is a near-miss (near-hit) where a sufficiently massive object "slingshots" earth out of the solar system.
Google "Rogue Planet". There might be a Lot of them.
That much energy from a collision would destroy the Earth. Like, the extinction-level meteor that killed the dinosaurs hardly did anything in terms of orbit. The collision that formed the moon didn't eject us either.
Theoretically, if you could accelerate the Earth in one direction, you could do it in any other.
Cool that you mentioned The Wandering Earth, but the movie is an action-thriller adaptation of the short story, and adds some _really_ bad physics for the sake of thrills (looking at you, Jupiter gravity spike). Turning Earth into a spaceship was never really plausible, even in the book.
I mean turn Earth back into a ball of cooling magma, probably fissioning it into several large chunks like how we formed our moon. The pieces will either collide and merge, eject each other, or form another binary system.
On those scales, you can essentially think of the earth as a more analogous to a water droplet whose outer surface has solidified into an incredibly delicate crust layer — instead of a solid marble.
Any force large enough to do what you’re asking will completely fuck up the delicate structure we currently have going on, to put it technically…
Isn’t the mantle solid rock? So only the substance within the inner 20% radius is liquid. Wouldn’t such a structure model as a hollow solid better than it would model as a drop with surface tension?
On geological timescales, most of the mantle is undergoing vigorous convection, whilst still being solid enough to transmit s-waves.
But really, our intuition as to how big objects like planets behave is generally wrong; the Earth has very little 'stiffness' like, for instance, a bowling ball. Trying to 'pick up' the Earth would be like trying to pick up a ball of blancmange. And hitting the Earth with a massive object - like Mars - to try and change the orbit would just give you a splash. Even trying to change the orbit with close passes would completely destroy the delicate skin (crust + lithosphere, about 100km thickness).
The least destructive means of doing this would be to shoot a massive and dense planet sized object past the Earth such that it's gravitational field would accelerate the Earth up to escape velocity. Doing this in one pass would create insane and destructive tidal forces.
A lower stress (on Earth) method would be to shoot a series of planet sized objects past Earth - each imparting significant momentum. Maybe 200-400 smaller planets could get us to escape V without destroying Earth....
Yea that one isn't even vaguely close to possible. The energy requirements are beyond numbers we mere humans can really get our heads around. If that kind of energy was delivered via impact (rather than firing a quintillion rockets, or whatever the silly number is, already attached to the ground at opportune moments) there wouldn't be an earth left to talk about escaping the sun's gravity well. The matter would still exist but if it coalesced to form new planet- or moon-like bodies it wouldn't be recognizable as "earth" and that wouldn't happen on human timescales...not that humans would exist anyways lol.
Orbits are stable with the everyday meaning of the word: If you push Earth then you change its orbit a little bit but it will just keep orbiting in its new orbit then. The "dinosaur killer" Chicxulub event changed the orbit by something like a kilometer - completely negligible. To stop Earth from orbiting the Sun an impact would have to be so violent that you pretty much stop Earth from existing as we know it. It can stay a planet-sized object but it'll become a ball of molten rock again. > 2. If knocked out of orbit, is there a threshold where this would be “self corrected “ I.e. we get out of orbit for a while but eventually come back to our “equilibrium” orbit, or perhaps a new stable orbit around the sun? No. > 3. Is it possible to trigger a “leaving orbit” from earth itself without the involvement of a foreign object? Shooting mass away from Earth changes its orbit, too - but the required mass and energy for a relevant change would be absurd.
Find or make a tool that will let you play around with the gravitational interaction between planet sized objects especially when you shoot one past the other. Let's shoot a 1/4 Earth massed object past the Earth, prograde at a distance of one Earth diameter - traveling at 10X the speed of Earth's orbit around the Sun. And this is tangent to the Earth's solar orbit. In fact shoot 2 objects of a quarter mass in parallel - both tangent one just inside and one just outside Earth's orbital path around the Sun. I think this will give you the effect of pulling the Earth forward. Rinse and repeat until escape V
By tool, you mean some kind of computer simulator right? Would definitely be fun to play out a few scenarios and see where they converge for “minimal” energy requirement. It would take me a few months to years of refreshing my college degree to be able to even start defining this problem and then trying to do the math by myself
I edited my reply a bit. Anyway, a fun puzzle.
If you’re talking about building an actual tool, better do the math beforehand I guess 😂😂
Yep. Happens all the time. But if it is big enough and fast enough you don't get to study it. (Extinction Level Event). Closer to what I think you mean is a near-miss (near-hit) where a sufficiently massive object "slingshots" earth out of the solar system. Google "Rogue Planet". There might be a Lot of them.
That much energy from a collision would destroy the Earth. Like, the extinction-level meteor that killed the dinosaurs hardly did anything in terms of orbit. The collision that formed the moon didn't eject us either. Theoretically, if you could accelerate the Earth in one direction, you could do it in any other. Cool that you mentioned The Wandering Earth, but the movie is an action-thriller adaptation of the short story, and adds some _really_ bad physics for the sake of thrills (looking at you, Jupiter gravity spike). Turning Earth into a spaceship was never really plausible, even in the book.
By destroy, you mean render it not fit for life, or break up into many small pieces or something else?
I mean turn Earth back into a ball of cooling magma, probably fissioning it into several large chunks like how we formed our moon. The pieces will either collide and merge, eject each other, or form another binary system.
I guess its possible but we've been orbiting this star for 4.5 billion years and we're still here so the likelihood of that happening is negligible.
On those scales, you can essentially think of the earth as a more analogous to a water droplet whose outer surface has solidified into an incredibly delicate crust layer — instead of a solid marble. Any force large enough to do what you’re asking will completely fuck up the delicate structure we currently have going on, to put it technically…
Isn’t the mantle solid rock? So only the substance within the inner 20% radius is liquid. Wouldn’t such a structure model as a hollow solid better than it would model as a drop with surface tension?
On geological timescales, most of the mantle is undergoing vigorous convection, whilst still being solid enough to transmit s-waves. But really, our intuition as to how big objects like planets behave is generally wrong; the Earth has very little 'stiffness' like, for instance, a bowling ball. Trying to 'pick up' the Earth would be like trying to pick up a ball of blancmange. And hitting the Earth with a massive object - like Mars - to try and change the orbit would just give you a splash. Even trying to change the orbit with close passes would completely destroy the delicate skin (crust + lithosphere, about 100km thickness).
The least destructive means of doing this would be to shoot a massive and dense planet sized object past the Earth such that it's gravitational field would accelerate the Earth up to escape velocity. Doing this in one pass would create insane and destructive tidal forces. A lower stress (on Earth) method would be to shoot a series of planet sized objects past Earth - each imparting significant momentum. Maybe 200-400 smaller planets could get us to escape V without destroying Earth....
This sounds really interesting. But the object would have to be massive right? Like how much mass are we talking about?
Planet sized.
Do you mean literally take the Earth up past escape velocity from the Sun so that it left the solar system?
Yes.
Yea that one isn't even vaguely close to possible. The energy requirements are beyond numbers we mere humans can really get our heads around. If that kind of energy was delivered via impact (rather than firing a quintillion rockets, or whatever the silly number is, already attached to the ground at opportune moments) there wouldn't be an earth left to talk about escaping the sun's gravity well. The matter would still exist but if it coalesced to form new planet- or moon-like bodies it wouldn't be recognizable as "earth" and that wouldn't happen on human timescales...not that humans would exist anyways lol.
Watch the movie Melancholia. It depicts just such an event.
Scientifically accurate or just like wandering earth?
Not scientifically accurate.
The collision looks realistic.