Timeline for If a massive object like Jupiter flew past the Earth how close would it need to come to pull people off of the surface?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 5, 2019 at 3:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackAstronomy/status/1136105563262205952 | ||
| May 30, 2019 at 5:21 | comment | added | Luaan | @Aron If you were very, very careful, no. Mountains aren't held to the Earth's surface merely through gravity, while humans are. The same is true for oceans, though there the extra attractive force is much smaller. Of course, both planets would be rather disturbed anyway, but the OP explicitly said he doesn't want to consider those effects. | |
| May 29, 2019 at 21:48 | vote | accept | Yevgeny Simkin | ||
| May 29, 2019 at 20:40 | comment | added | brichins | @reirab No, it can't be! Surely he's just working on a new What-If book, keep the faith! | |
| May 28, 2019 at 23:07 | answer | added | hmakholm left over Monica | timeline score: 18 | |
| May 28, 2019 at 21:21 | comment | added | Barmar | @reirab Yes, someone else already pointed out that he seems to have abandoned What If. | |
| May 28, 2019 at 20:22 | comment | added | reirab | @Barmar If Randall answered it, then, yes, it would. Sadly, Randall's last post on What If was a year ago last week. | |
| May 28, 2019 at 16:47 | comment | added | Loren Pechtel | @Aron Correct. The planet is destroyed. | |
| S May 28, 2019 at 10:08 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
emoji makes it hard to understand the answer with screan readers, and is unprofessional
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| May 28, 2019 at 6:57 | comment | added | Aron | @LorenPechtel Which means that things like mountains and the seas get sucked up too. | |
| May 28, 2019 at 5:35 | comment | added | uhoh | I've just asked Can we 🐻 to have emoji in posts? | |
| May 28, 2019 at 5:15 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S May 28, 2019 at 10:08 | |||||
| May 28, 2019 at 2:02 | comment | added | Loren Pechtel | This is the very definition of the Roche limit of the passing body. | |
| May 28, 2019 at 1:27 | comment | added | Vikki | @Barmar: Assuming that's even still active - the last post there was months ago at least. | |
| May 27, 2019 at 18:32 | comment | added | Barmar | I think you could get a more "fun" answer if you wrote to what-if.xkcd.com. | |
| May 27, 2019 at 17:12 | comment | added | Taladris | That would be a cute story if one day, we wake up and we find out that birds disappeared, "stolen" by a planet passing by | |
| May 27, 2019 at 14:16 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @Chappo Not of the same mass but of a much smaller mass, and much closer, exploiting the inhomogeneity of its gravitational field. Imagine a black hole 10 km above us exerting 1g on us. (Its mass would be much smaller than Jupiter's.) The far side of the earth, being 12000 km away, would only experience (12000/10)^2 ~ 1.4E-6 g, i.e. almost no attraction. That black hole flying by at 9 km distance would suck us up, and some of the upper 1 km of earth's crust. | |
| May 27, 2019 at 12:27 | comment | added | Chappo Hasn't Forgotten | @PeterA.Schneider I'm not quite sure what you mean. If in the answers below you replaced Jupiter with a black hole of the same mass, there'd be no significant difference (initially at least): the gravitational force is more or less the same. | |
| May 27, 2019 at 9:37 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | The question would be more interesting with a rather small body (like a small, dense moon or even better, a small black hole) whose gravity field close by is stronger than the Earth's but farther away too weak to suck the Earth in. | |
| May 27, 2019 at 9:16 | answer | added | Pere | timeline score: 20 | |
| May 27, 2019 at 8:27 | history | became hot network question | |||
| May 27, 2019 at 1:06 | answer | added | uhoh | timeline score: 102 | |
| May 27, 2019 at 0:30 | review | First posts | |||
| May 27, 2019 at 1:17 | |||||
| May 27, 2019 at 0:27 | history | asked | Yevgeny Simkin | CC BY-SA 4.0 |