what will happen if the earth accidentally skips out of its orbit?

Question

if it is gonna crash with some other object on space,how much time will it take??

Answer 1

The Earth would never just "skip" out of orbit. It would take a cataclysmic event that would basically have to destroy all life on the planet before the Earth's orbit would even change.

Answer 2

The earth should not be skipping out of its orbit, and if it could you would have thought that it would have happened already. This is due to the gravity of the sun. Nothing within light years of Earth can compete with the gravity of the sun, which is why it is unlikely to fall out of orbit. However, it surprises most people that the Earth actually does not orbit in a two-dimensional plane. In fact, while the Earth goes around the sun, it actually wobbles up and down in space. This is due to the varying degree of tilt of the Earth while in orbit. For more information on this 'wobble', see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_wobble

And regarding the answer that it would end up in another star's orbit, this is impossible since the nearest star is 4.6 light years away! By the time the Earth reached said star all life would have died out and the Earth's surface would become riddled with more impact craters than all the other planets combined.

Answer 3

The inner Solar System is no longer "chaotic" in the technical sense. This means that the planets in the inner solar system, together with the Sun, can no longer skip out of their orbits.

This is not true of the outer solar system, beyond Jupiter. It is not impossible that the cumulative effect of perturbations of Uranus by Saturn and Jupiter would send it out of its orbit, into a significantly different and eccentric trajectory. If that sent it in the direction of the inner Solar System (not likely), then that could return the inner Solar System to a chaotic state, accidentally skipping the Earth out of its orbit. This is quite unlikely, however, and would take thousands of Uranus orbits to occur.

Even more unlikely, but not impossible, is a large object coming in from outside the Solar System and knocking things around.

Answer 4

The earth is not only held in its orbit by the sun's gravity but by the effects of gravity from all other things in the universe, primarily in the Milky Way. It is possible that the explosion of another lager star could allow the earth's orbit to become more elliptical creating a sling shot type effect that would allow the earth to escape the sun's gravitational field. During the process, the earth would pass much closer to the sun and we would all perish beforehand so, don't worry about it.

Answer 5

Well Earth can't just accidentally skip out of its orbit any more than you could accidentally fall off the Earth. But if it did, space is big and mostly empty, so it would probably never hit anything.

Answer 6

it would do about the same thing as if you are sending a non-pilot rocket into deep space. after a while it would go wild without any control like a crazy horse. For example, lets pretend some pilot of the nasa had had enough of earth and little earthlings. In space, he would mannered the shuttle and piloted it out of orbit and into deep space. Full Gas. Then with out gas....it would indifferently orbited into space without pilots control and just vengeared in some uncontrolable rolling, most probably, motions. The earth is round and we are not skipping these uncontrollable fashions of wandering into space. the elevator down and moving forward, as the sun still burst its powers to move us forward towards an unknown destination.

Answer 7

First, the Sun must disappear so Earth can be freed of the gravitational pull. The Earth travels around the Sun at 66000 mph so assume it would travel through space at that speed. At that speed, we could reach the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, in only 41000 years. In order to be captured by another star (i.e., go into orbit around it or crash into it), Earth must pass about as close to the star as our current distance from the Sun. Passing that close to Proxima Centauri at its distance of 4.2 light years is like hitting a target with a diameter of 1/32" from a distance of 100 yards --- without aiming!

The odds of doing that are about 1 in 270,000,000,000. If we figure that stars are all about that same 4.2 light years apart, we can expect a 50-50 chance of being captured by another star in only 7,000,000,000,000,000 years or 500,000 times the age of the universe.

In short, it will be a cold long trip.

Answer 8

It would give proof that Einstein was wrong about gravity -- but would also cause some problems for Creationists.

Too bad none of us would be around to learn from this, as it would probably involve crashing into the moon and killing all of us.

Answer 9

Impossible
It will end up in some other stars orbit

Answer 10

I guess that would depend on where it skips off to ....
Where ever it went, I doubt you would enjoy the trip...