"What would happen if only one planet disappeared from the solar system?"

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Whazzup?

My name’s Sid, and I’m from a planet in a place you call the Andromeda Galaxy. I’m in high school, and I have this assignment to find out what will happen to your solar system's “perfect harmony” if it loses a planet! So, I poof one of yours away with this ray blaster and track any changes. Don’t worry, I’ll put them back! Sort of.

"What would happen if only one planet disappeared from the solar system?"

So, let’s give it a shot!I’ll start with the planet closest to the Sun-Mercury, right?
Oh, it’s so small, I nearly missed it! Here we go! Ok, with Mercury gone, how’s Earth looking?
Hmm, no changes in the solar system. I saw that coming. It’s all about gravity.
Every object that has some mass attracts different objects due to its attractive force.
The larger the mass, the greater the force it has.
Mercury is that the smallest planet within the system, so it’snot too massive in space terms.
The second important factor is the distance between the objects.
At fifty million miles away, Mercury is no doubt far from Earth, so the gravitational force between the two of them isn’t that strong.
Ok, let’s put Mercury back and move on to…Venus! It’s the hottest planet in your solar system. One day here is almost 117 Earth days.

I’ll try the blue-button this time – oh, did you see that?
It just froze and broke into pieces! And … again, nothing really changed that much. Well, except you, Earthling, just lost the 2nd brightest object to light up the night sky…2nd to the Moon, of course. I suppose that’s why they call Venus the Evening Star! Looks like it got way darker after sunset than it used to be. All right, I’ll reassemble Venus now, and head to your home planet! Mwahaha!Earth – the one floating rock in the system that’s in that precious “Habitable Zone”– the perfect distance from your star to sustain life. Hey, I was just kidding! I'm obviously not going to poof Earth away, so let’s head to the Red Planet! Mars – I know humans are planning to send a mission there.

"What would happen if only one planet disappeared from the solar system?"

Would you personally want to go?
Tell me in the comments below! Let’s see what will happen when I spin the Red Planets fast that it shoots out of the solar system! Bye, Mars! And no significant changes again. This might be good for Earth in away.
There’s a huge belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Asteroids, as you know, aren’t Earth’s best friends.
Jupiter typically holds them along with its robust gravity, but from time to time, they break free and start moving toward the Sun.
No surprise really, since its gravitational pull is impressive.
Mars additionally has gravity to boast and acts somewhat sort of a plaything that hurries up asteroids within the direction of Earth.
So, no Mars – no slingshot, and the chances of the Blue Planet getting hit by an asteroid go down! Finally, the moment I’ve been waiting for! Time to experiment with the largest planet in your solar system – Jupiter! It weighs 3 times more than all its neighboring planets combined!

Hmm, how am I going to get this giant out of the system?
I know! I’ll use the Shrink Ray and make it 2 billion times smaller first. Now I can just throw it like a baseball! …Uh-oh, I think I’ve made a huge mistake!
With its large attractive force, Jupiter has protected Earth from asteroids and other space debris over the past 4½ billion years!
Now the sun’s gravitational pull is sending all that stuff toward the inner planets, and that includes Earth!
There will even be some little changes within the orbits of different planets, however, that maybe some thousands of years later.

For now, I gotta figure out a way to get Jupiter back before the Earth is doomed! Maybe this button?
No, ok, this one?
I'll just push all of them…Ah, brace for impact!!! …Phew! Whatever I did, it worked! The Giant is now resting peacefully back in its place, and Earth is saved! Sorry about that – must’ve given you a real scare! I’ll try to be more careful with the rest of the Gas Giants…It’s time for Saturn.
You can’t mistake it for the other planet because of those beautiful rings!
Scientists say they’ll disappear one day as Saturn’s immense gravity pulls them down in icy rain. But that won’t be until 300 million years from now, so no worries. Hmm, I guess I’ll have to push the red button for this one. Bam, and it's gone! Such a massive planet, the 2nd largest in the solar system, can’t be gone with no consequences. Look at Jupiter and Uranus! Their orbits have slightly shifted. Other than that, I don’t see any changes to the other planets. Saturn is just too far to influence them. That’s good! I wouldn’t want another close call like what happened when I took Jupiter away!
Uranus is very large yet, the 3rd largest planet in the solar system.
I’ll try this super powerful space lasso to move it out of the way – got it. Now, I’ll just throw it out of the system. And … nothing so far. Looks like it’s the same story as it was with Saturn – Uranus is so far away from the inner four planets that its disappearance has no effect on them whatsoever. But I can see that it did mess things up a bit among the outer planets. Alas, we’ve come to the last planet, unless you’re on Team Pluto! Sorry, but I’m gonna go with NASA on its status and exclude it from today’s experiment on your happy neighborhood of planets! Anyway, it’s Neptune's turn! Beyond it, you’ve got the Kuiper Belt. It's the donut-shaped region of icy objects and a ton of dwarf planets like Pluto. Neptune is so close to the outer edge of the solar system that I’ll just kick it out. Whoa, look at the Kuiper Belt – it’s going crazy!
Without Neptune’s gravitative pull keeping things stable, orbits are crossing, and celestial bodies are crashing into each other!
Check it out – Pluto’s orbit is misshapen now too! Neptune pretty much controls it, as well. But it’s too far away from Earth to affect it in any way. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to little Pluto, so let’s put the 8th planet back where it belongs! But I’m not ready to finish the experiment just yet! I need to find something that would really affect life on Earth. The Sun is the obvious answer, but the mess and chaos from its disappearance would be too massive and irreversible, so I’ll leave it where itis.

"What would happen if only one planet disappeared from the solar system?"

What about the Moon, though?
I’ve always had this secret dream to turn it into Swiss cheese and bite off a piece. It’s time! Yum! …Oh, my!

What just happened to the earth's axis?
It’s so tilted, even more than it was before!
The weather down there has gone wild too – there aren't any a lot of seasons the least bit, and new ice ages are on their way!
The ocean tides have become much lower than they used to be.

And is the planet starting to spin faster?
Yep, the day now lasts only 6 to 12 hours because there’s no more pull of the moon to slow down the Earth’s rotation.
There aren't any a lot of satellite or star eclipses to look at.
And the nights are so dark with nothing but billions of stars and Venus (which together are still way dimmer than the Moon) to light the sky up. None of this sounds good for life on Earth, so I’ll de-cheesy your Moon and put it back where it was! It looks like out of all the planets in your sun’s complex system, only Jupiter’s disappearance would be a major problem for Earth.
So I assume it’s true what they say: the system very may be a delicate and harmonious balance!

BRIGHT SITE OF LIFE ONE

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