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Planet Habitability after Doomsday Scenarios


mangekyou-sama

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tugging caused by a passing orbit from an object of sufficient mass and size that pulls us out of orbit toward the edge of the solar system...

what else?

Can any other body aside from a star do that? Such a body would have to be more massive than the sun. And if does exist, how would it end up passing by the solar system?

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i think that survival in the iceball scenario is much more plausible. you dont have to go off planet to survive (though your best bet is probibly to shoot for jupiter and colonize its moons if you did). there are a lot of underground areas which would be perfect for habitation, old mines, cave systems, nuclear waste depositories (the irony). anywhere where you have access to geothermal energy. you might even be able to survive on the surface with nuclear heaters, though i doubt that would be of much use. having the earth snowball would help insulate against loss of core heat, which would prolong the earth's capacity for heat retention.

im actually somewhat interested what happens to the rest of the solar system, would everything just kind of scatter out into interstellar space or would jupiter capture some of the bodies. earth looked like it was headed in jupiter's general direction. i doubt earth would get captured because of its greater orbital velocity, but other bodies might. i also wonder how long it would take a rogue earth to pass through another solar system, perhaps humanity can survive that long on core heat alone. at some point you need to abandon ship and go somewhere else. then again, who knows when you live in a universe where starts randomly blink out of existence.

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What are the chances of hitting something with a moon, and thus an off set centre of gravity? That and the fact "space is big". You can shine a laser out of earth, and possibly never actually hit ANYTHING on it's way out of the Universe (that's no type, not Galaxy, but actually universe).

Assuming a disturbance of Oort, the chances are better than using a laser pointer. Gravity attracts moons and if a lot of objects are disturbed it would not be hard to imagine a large impact every 4 million years for some time.

They would all be leaving a sphere a light year in radius and travel towards a periapsis near the sun. If they do not hit anything (Jupiter being an easier target) they would come back around every few million years or so to try again. As you mentioned space is big, but the chances would not be impossible.

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What are the chances of hitting something with a moon, and thus an off set centre of gravity? That and the fact "space is big". You can shine a laser out of earth, and possibly never actually hit ANYTHING on it's way out of the Universe (that's no type, not Galaxy, but actually universe).

Assuming a disturbance of Oort, the chances are better than using a laser pointer. Gravity attracts moons and if a lot of objects are disturbed it would not be hard to imagine a large impact every 4 million years for some time.

They would all be leaving a sphere a light year in radius and travel towards a periapsis near the sun. If they do not hit anything (Jupiter being an easier target) they would come back around every few million years or so to try again. As you mentioned space is big, but the chances would not be impossible.

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A suitably large and relatively selfsufficient spacestation could do it... Heck, we could make an "ark" type thing, with... if not large animals and humans, then seeds and bacteria.

We've got some sort of seed vault somewhere right? If that fails... Kim Kardashian's got her eggs frozen too! lol

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Assuming a disturbance of Oort, the chances are better than using a laser pointer. Gravity attracts moons and if a lot of objects are disturbed it would not be hard to imagine a large impact every 4 million years for some time.

They would all be leaving a sphere a light year in radius and travel towards a periapsis near the sun. If they do not hit anything (Jupiter being an easier target) they would come back around every few million years or so to try again. As you mentioned space is big, but the chances would not be impossible.

An theory that the pretty regular mass extinctions are caused by an regular disturbance in oort, it can be related to our position in the galaxy or something in orbit far out in it.

This however is not something who is an danger to life itself, the late heavy bombardment might have been, but we have not have anything close afterward.

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We've got some sort of seed vault somewhere right? If that fails... Kim Kardashian's got her eggs frozen too! lol

Yeah I think so, in some bunker in norway, if I remember correctly.

EDIT: There it was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault

PS: I don't think thats where Kim Kardashian's eggs are tho...

*lol* I shudder for that future...

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In line with magnemoe's suggestion, I tried simulating a scenario where the Earth drifts from the solar system and into inter-stellar space and eventually finding its way into a neighboring system. The idea seems good, having Earth find a new home and all but there were problems.

In this experiment I simulated Earth's approach to the Kepler-62 system in an inclined angle.

Naturally, the Earth stays frozen in interstellar space. I was hoping the Earth would then have a highly eccentric orbit around the star at best. But that's not how physics works does it?

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As the Earth gets pulled to the star, it just slingshots out of the system again.

So with these observations I have a few questions again.

  • So if the Earth drifts out of the solar system, won't it be able to find a new home star again?
  • What can possibly slow a planet down to avoid slingshot-ing out again?

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A capture slingshot/aerobreak off a hot superjupiter, perhaps?

Aerobraking Earth......

That's a Pay-Per-View event I would put money out for.

Although I would imagine the tidal forces would tear Earth apart?

Edited by Tommygun
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Assuming a disturbance of Oort, the chances are better than using a laser pointer. Gravity attracts moons and if a lot of objects are disturbed it would not be hard to imagine a large impact every 4 million years for some time.

They would all be leaving a sphere a light year in radius and travel towards a periapsis near the sun. If they do not hit anything (Jupiter being an easier target) they would come back around every few million years or so to try again. As you mentioned space is big, but the chances would not be impossible.

Imagining a large impact is distinctly different from calculating a large impact. Does gravity allow frequent or even possible collisions once the local neighbourhood is cleared.

Example in point. It's easy to imagine thousands of stars colliding when 2 galaxies merge/collide/pass.

In reality (that is simulated with the known laws of physics and based off of current observations) there are less than 10 collisions for a Galaxy merge.

That's 100–400 billion stars in each galaxy, passing by, without a collision. Only 5 of them find a "partner" to get up close to.

Now think of the earth, and how many close neighbours we have (much less?) and how many get closer (even less) and how many will hit? Is it less than 10 in the lifetime of the earth? Is it something for us to be concerned about, as I'm not worried about Andromeda sending anything into Sol (that is, even for all of time!). :P

PS reference for the collision math (not done it myself, but trust it's correct) for Andromeda/us: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_collision

Other simulations and calculations have been done for other galaxies. My guess at "10" is an overestimate as well!

Edited by Technical Ben
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I wonder how long would the Earth's atmosphere last if that happens.

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing the atmosphere would get pulled off by the gas giant's gravity first and then Earth might be pulled apart like Comet Shoemaker Levy did by tidal forces before it even hits the gas giants atmosphere.

But Earth is a lot denser than a Comet, so I'm not sure how bad it would get.

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I could be wrong, but I'm guessing the atmosphere would get pulled off by the gas giant's gravity first and then Earth might be pulled apart like Comet Shoemaker Levy did by tidal forces before it even hits the gas giants atmosphere.

But Earth is a lot denser than a Comet, so I'm not sure how bad it would get.

Then we should use Earth as a heatshield!

Its probably best to ignore me, i'm a psychopath sometimes

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