or just a 'poof'?
it would be absolutely immensely catastrophic from the point of view of the planet … but for us and for the Sun, it would be nothing.
what would happen if a rogue, earth-size planet ran straight into the sun? anything interesting?
Submitted 2 months ago by originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com to [deleted]
https://moist.catsweat.com/m/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world/t/404673
Comments
A_A@lemmy.world 2 months ago
ramble81@lemm.ee 2 months ago
That always reminds me of force of impact. The bug hit the windshield just as hard as the windshield hit the bug, but the bug felt it more.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“oh look. A shadow.”
“Oh. I missed it.”
RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
For a start, the planet wouldn’t actually collide with the sun on one piece - once the planet crosses the Roche limit it will break apart
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
Sorry, but that’s wrong.
Roche limit applies in a circular orbit, tidal effects are irrelevant in a head on collision.
willow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Famous example of a comet breaking up from entering Jupiter’s roche limit in a highly eccentric orbit (not circular). Spaghettification is also an example of how tidal forces still apply during a head on collision.
A_A@lemmy.world 2 months ago
if it “ran straight”, it wouldn’t have tangential speed, only radial.
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 2 months ago
All of the mass would still hit the sun, though.
RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yeah, but single large mass hitting in one place vs stuff spread out vs planet forming a ring and deorbiting over months/years would affect the outcome
Practically, I’d think there wouldn’t be a huge effect beyond some CMEs - the mass of the earth is a rounding error compared to the sun - but I’m not a cosmologist
tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Are you planning something?
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 2 months ago
All the people on that planet would die.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 2 months ago
Due to their free floating nature, rogue planets are typically uninhabited.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Hey, a vacuous truth is still a truth!
Deepus@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Wait, rougue planets are a thing? Ive just always assumed they either stayed in orbit or got blown to smithereens when their atar went kaboom!
Akasazh@feddit.nl 2 months ago
I would expect the rogue to backstab and do crit damage on the dark side of the sun.
toddestan@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Probably the biggest threat to us would be the rogue planet kicking some largish objects out in the Oort cloud into new orbits as it passed through. Some of the orbits would go into the inner solar system and could intersect with the Earth at some point.
ProfessorProteus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Thankfully the chances of that happening would be reduced by the difference between the solar system’s ecliptic place vs that of the Milky Way. According to this Stack Exchange user, it’s a 60.2-degree difference. Illustrated beautifully here.
Then again, it isn’t called a “cloud” for nothing. Still, a large chunk of it is theorized to be aligned with the plane of the solar system.
FunderPants@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
I would expect that it’s gravity while heading into the sun from outside the solar system would greatly disturb the existing planets and probably throw some of them into new orbits if not out of the solar system entirely.
Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Are you sure about that? If there are things I know about the solar system, it’s that the distance between planets is massive and earth weighs nothing compared to the outer planets or especially the sun.
That earth like rogue planet needs to be like 1/500th of the distance to the sun to have an comparable gravitational pull (sun is 333000 heavier, sqrt is 577), and I’m not a astronomer but I believe for each planet a random number between 0 and 2 solar distances that the rogue planet passes the orbit is appropriate. So like, 1/1000 chance a planet gets seriously disturbed…
I’m gonna be honest I thought this would be way lower before I calculated.
fritobugger2017@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sun says yum.
Rubisco@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
At what speed?
sxan@midwest.social 2 months ago
Oooo, good question. What if it were traveling, relatively, at a fair percentage of C? Say 80 or 90%? What if it went not straight through the center, but say 30% off of center? Would any mass make a complete pass through, at that velocity? It’d be about 23% more dense from relativity, but countless YouTube videos about gun ammunition has taught me that velocity is the biggest factor in armor penetration. Would it blow a huge plume of plasma out there other side?
Dude, you just made this no doubt question far, far more interesting!
cevn@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Fascinating. Lets say at 90% the planet spends 1 second inside the sun. Doesn’t seem like enough to melt the whole thing so it just keeps going, just a lot smaller. The core of the sun tried its best to push it back but gets pierced and the fusion reaction stops. Star killer??
netvor@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Dude, you just made this no doubt question far, far more interesting!
…and what if it was running AWAY from the sun!
Here, Fixed it for ya.
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Oooo, good question. What if it were traveling, relatively, at a fair percentage of C? Say 80 or 90%?
How many objects (not counting the “Heart of Gold”) do you know that are traveling at such speeds?
BlackJerseyGiant@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Big flare, seismic waves propagating on the surface, and POOF.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
don’t open this if you don’t want part of the three body problem series spoiled
Isn’t that the core element of one of the scorched earth fallback plans one of the wallfacers came up with? I thought it was supposed to have been roughly scientifically viable…? Or am I completely misremembering?
learningduck@programming.dev 2 months ago
Incorrect. The plan was to send a signal that our sun has a civilized planet, so that an unspecified alien race would blow the sun up to prevent humanity any further.
Zirconium@lemmy.world 2 months ago
spoiler
Rey Diaz plan was to use planets starting with degrading mercury’s orbit to crash into the sun and expand the “atmosphere?” Or radius of the sun that will then eat up all the other planets in the solar system. three-body-problem.fandom.com/…/Manuel_Rey_Diaz Luo ji’s plan was to use dark forest deterrence by signalling other aliens if trisolarians didn’t get their shit together
Eiri@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is speculation. I’m not a physicist.
Gravitational effects. It would almost certainly disturb a lot of asteroids and comets into new orbits. It wouldn’t be a catastrophe for Earth , given the protection of the gas giants, but it would probably increase risks for the next few decades/centuries/millenniums. Depending on the exact trajectory of the planet, it would probably also disturb other planets’ orbits a little. Anything radically different would be unlikely, but maybe something light and relatively unstable like Mercury would go nuts. As for Earth, in the likeliest scenarios, at most maybe the length of a year is altered.
The collision (perfectly head-on). It vastly depends on the speed. If it’s very slow, it’ll probably be diverted from the sun by the other planets and solar winds. If it’s fast but not relativistic, it’ll probably cause massive solar flares and very obvious sun spots for a while. At relativistic speeds (a sizeable fraction of the speed of light), though, it would be a lot of energy. Something big would probably happen when the extremely fast planet smashes into the dense core of the sun, probably. I’m not sure what though. Maybe it would temporarily strengthen fusion and cause some sort of micro supernova?
The collision(glancing blow). The sun is massive but most of its volume is pretty wispy. Most of its volume is a lot less dense than a planet, so the planet would likely have a pretty dramatic effect on it. If it’s fast enough, it might even come out on the other side, smashed to pieces by gravitational forces and thermal shock. It might expel a lot of plasma in a stream, like a squishy body shot with the fastest bullet in the world. A bullet on a curved trajectory though, because the proximity to the sun’s core would likely steer it significantly. If the planet was going fast enough to escape despite the friction having it slowed down and the massive gravitational pull, then I could imagine pretty much a shotgun of planet chunks shot through the solar system. It might not hit anything, and probably won’t considering how much of the solar system is empty space, but if it does, it would be catastrophic for, say, Earth.
As for long term effects, if the planet indeed merges into the sun, it would increase the sun’ metallicity (content in elements heavier than helium) by a tiny percentage. It might affect its long term evolution by a very small margin. If it’s a glancing blow that’s not extremely fast and it’s just right to create a mostly stable orbit, it might form a new asteroid belt that may or may not coalesce into a new planet in time.
General_Shenanigans@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Seeing as how the sun has flares that are wider across than the earth is, I don’t think it would do a whole lot. I’m on the fence, though. The surface of a star is the way it is and where it is because of two things: the immense pressure of the nuclear furnace and the immense gravity holding it together. Those two things basically fight against each other and determine how far out the surface of the star is.
I have to wonder if disturbing that equilibrium just for a second might cause a little “burp” or something.
bran_buckler@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Would its impact create a solar flare? And if that flare was hurtling towards Earth, would it be more devastating than other solar storms we normally see?
viking@infosec.pub 2 months ago
The planet would have burned to a crisp a long time before it even touched the sun. A waft of residual gases would maybe get close enough, which does exactly nothing.
It’s the equivalent of tossing a single grain of hail into an active volcano.
Eiri@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I could see that if a planet slowly spiraled into it, but the question specifically asks about a direct collision.
Do you really think silicon and iron and other relatively heavy elements can simply be vaporized that quickly?
viking@infosec.pub 2 months ago
Uh, yes. Absolutely. The corona of the sun alone is about 5 million km thick and has temperatures of >1 million degrees C.
Crossing that distance takes about 0.3 light minutes. For a planet with a somewhat large mass traveling at a fraction of that (average travel speed of celestial objects is around 1000-10000 km/min, depending on its mass), it would take between 83 and 833 hours (3.5-35 days).
For reference, the distance from earth to moon is about 400000km (and takes a rocket 3 days to traverse), so the sun’s radius is about 12x that. Just put things into perspective.
Silicon vaporizes at 3650°C, iron at 3500°C. A couple days at a million degrees? Yeah it’s vaporized alright.
altima_neo@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
I mean the sun is pretty heckin huge
Image
It would a situation of, “who threw that pebble?”
edgemaster72@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You can’t fool me with that label of “diameter”, I know that’s actually a trench with an exhaust port that if successfully fired into will cause a cascading failure
Deestan@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Ah, but at what speed?
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 2 months ago
The speed of love.
teft@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Now I’m imagining the type of event that could cause a planet to move at such a significant percent of c that you could disrupt the sun with it. I don’t think we’re gonna get a planet moving that fast. I think we’d be limited to stellar core remnants to get that kick in velocity.
spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Okay so I forgot how big the sun is and had that absentminded mental picture moment of “oh it would make a big bang as something 3/4s the size of the sun would hit it”…
This picture was a very helpful reminder of just how out to lunch that thought was. Don’t trust your absent thoughts, folks 😅
djsaskdja@reddthat.com 2 months ago
The more I learn about the sun, the more I realize those ancient civilizations who worshipped it got it right. Look at that thing it’s fucking huge, scary, and it’s like right there.
oxideseven@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
What’s this picture from lol? Why label the line diameter and not actually have the value?!