What kind of affect would happen to planet earth if one of our planets in our solar system disappears?

Answer 1

Favourite answer

There is one planet, because of it's size and massive gravity, that does have an effect on Earth and that is Jupiter.  Jupiter's Gravity keeps the Asteroid Belt in Balance and with out Jupiter it is possible that we would see more Asteroids strikes on Earth.

The outer planets would make no difference.

Answer 2

What kind of Effect...not Affect.

Answer 3

how , wants to know why they disappeared ..

Answer 4

It would disrupt our orbit. 

Answer 5

Earth's orbit would be severely disrupted. However, effects would be in the form of a disruption to the cumulative gravitational effects of the current solar system, and would take many orbits before the Earth's orbit turned elliptical then either went hyperbolic or intersected with the sun.

The solar system has an amazing and probably unique stability which has enabled the Earth to continue it's current orbit for over four billion years. Remove a planet and that stability disappears.

Think of a system of linked pendulums. That is a good analogy to the solar system, where all the planets are linked by gravity. It is very difficult to find a set of parameters that will allow those pendulums to swing regularly for billions of swings. Now upset the configuration by removing a pendulum, even a minor one, and see what happens.

Answer 6

It would probably impact astronomers and the religious folks the most.... but, physically - not much. 

Answer 7

There are chaotic influences of planetary orbits from weak gravitational attraction between distant bodies and it's impossible to predict what would happen.

Answer 8

maybe nothing would happen

Answer 9

Not much at all.  Jupiter has only 1/1000 of the mass of the sun, and because Jupiter is always at LEAST five times farther away from the earth, than the sun is, the gravitational effect of Jupiter on the earth is at most 1/25000 of the gravitational effect of the sun...and sometimes as little as 1/100000.  So Jupiter can very slightly alter the shape of earth's orbit.  Other planets affect us even less than Jupiter does.

Answer 10

The effect would be practically zero. Except for the headlines in all the news sites.

Answer 11

it might not affect it