ONLY PHD in PHYSICS need apply to answer PLEASE?

Question

can the EARTH be physically MOVED out of its current orbit to say, one between mars and jupiter, by MANKINDS efforts alone. IF SO, please state the method required.

How can anyone give me thumbs down? If you dont comprehend my question then move on, dont vote against it, shesh....

In regards to the answer about placing a rocket on the moon (I hope you didnt steal this concept from moon base alpha as im seeking SCIence, not SCIFI) ....even being gravitationally bound, the earths mass is greater than the moon by a great deal, so how could moving the moon have a pull on the earth, I realize it has a pull on the earths liquid but, on the planet itself?? Or is this due soley to the slow movement of the moon that would allow this to occur? Also, how can it be that a rocket, which implies a fuel source, be capable of moving an object that has such a massive.....mass? Does the 'vacuum' of space permit an object to be more easily moved via technology no matter WHAT mass it is? Doesnt the orbital path around the sun and the suns gravitational pull have a significant counter pull on any technology we would provide to cause movement?

on a side note, I only chose the area between jupiter and mars by chance. I u nderstand the asteroid belt would pose a problem but I wasnt thinking in linear 2dimension terms. Space isnt like a highway, one isnt limited to move in a straight line, one can go up, down etc- if I were approaching an area of space known to contain various fragments to larger sized ateroids I would simply chose to enter an orbit above or below the one that they occupy, the "ring of debris" is by comparison to the 'spherical' area of 'empty' space only a localized phenomenon and could be avoided. Again, space isnt like a road, and the asteroid belt, is named a belt because its not a spherical enclosure preventing one from going above or below it.

funkucla!...theres no way you could fit the worlds population 4 times its current # onto the west coast of anything without stacking them on top of the other people until they reached up into the atmosphere. EVEN if you COULD place that many people on any current land mass, running or moving wouldnt do anything. Why? Because being born does ADD to the mass of the earth for matter is CREATED when someone is born, matter is TRANSFORMED from existing MATERIAL. So the mass would have no change at all. When you eat something, its because that something was produced from existing material on the earth, so placing it within you to add to YOUR MASS, doesnt add to the mass of the planet because the MASS WAS ALREADY present, just in a different form.

that OUGHT to read DOESNT ADD to the MASS.
DOES NOT ADD.

jesus, I need to slow my typing down, I also meant to say matter isnt, or IS NOT created. Because einstein even stated that matter isnt created nor destroyed merely transformed

Its truly alarming at the number of sheer imbeciles on yahoo- thanks for the thumbs down, youve proven many points to me about how its primarily the uneducated who frequent online, yet remain fools despite having acess- its no wonder that most people are considered to be of AVERAGE intellect in a world where average equates to half-wits.

Answer 1

Big rocket on moon: Lots of reaction mass available, low escape velocity, no atmosphere to block the exhaust, and no greenies to complain about the noise and pollution. The moon is gravitationally bound to the earth, so if the moon is moved slowly and carefully enough, the earth will follow. Of course, we'll want to clean up the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars first. Great plan for solar main sequence survival.

In response to "addtional detail". For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That means the gravitational force on the moon due to earth's gravity is exactly the same as the force on the earth due to the moon, but in the opposite direction. Now, since the earth is more massive, that means its acceleration is proportionatly smaller. Since the moon's orbit is circular (at present), that means the acceleration is centripetal and the earth's center orbits in circle of small radius.

The extreme limit of how hard you can pull on the earth with a rocket on the moon would be if you brought the moon to a stop relative to the earth. The moon will then start falling toward the earth, and the earth toward the moon (though more slowly). However, if you oppose the gravitational force on the moon with rocket thrust of equal an opposite magnitude, plus a bit more to match the acceleration of the earth in both sign and direction, the earth-moon distance with stay the same, and the pair will accelerate together. Note that the rocket exhaust is now pointed towards the earth; this can be avoided by vectoring it off to the side slightly. This added acceleration can be used to accelerate earth in the direction of its motion around the sun. This would cause the earth's orbit to slowly spiral outward. As I said, this is the extreme limit of how hard you can pull (unless you bring the moon closer). In practicle, one need only perturb the moon's orbit to get an effect; it'll just take longer.

Yes, one would need a phenomenal energy source to accelerate lunar material for rocket exhaust. Thermonuclear fusion would be the best bet for this. That only requires extacting the naturally occuring deuterium from water. I haven't done the math, but all the earth's ocean's might suffice; deuterium is less than 1% of the hydrogen in water, so we'd hardly miss it. There's lots of water in the outer solar system too, if needed.

Answer 2

It is possible using technology we currently have.
It can be achived using what's called gravitational assist. The plan, as I understand, is to put a rocket on one of the Kuiper Belt objects (those are asteroids that orbit at the outer edge of our solar system, just beyond pluto). Using the rocket, we can put one of these objects in an elliptical orbit that intersects the orbits of the Earth and Jupiter, and having it "slingshot" around these two planets over a period of thousands of years (don't quote me on this, it's on the order of one thousand years). Ever time the asteroid makes a "swing" around a planet, it changes the momentum of the planet by a slight amount. Normally this effect would not be noticeable because of the vast mass difference between the two bodies. However, when repeated in a calculated fashion over many orbits, the manuver can bring the Earth's oribt out to where Mars currently is at the cost of bringing Jupiter closer.

This is not my area of specialty and I don't have a PhD, if you are seriously interested, however, please contact Don Korycansky at UC Santa Cruz: http://www.es.ucsc.edu/personnel/Korycansky/index.html

Answer 3

>>ONLY PHD in PHYSICS need apply
Hahahahaha
You're on Yahoo answers.
You'll be lucky if you can find someone with their GED.

>>can the EARTH be physically MOVED out of its current orbit to say, one between mars and jupiter, by MANKINDS efforts alone

With modern technology, no.
If we combined all the atomic bombs on the planet to try to change the planet's orbit, it wouldn't be enough for you to even notice the difference.

The most powerful atom bomb ever detonated had about a 50 megaton force. Say you get a thousand of those - you're up to 50,000 mega tons. The mass of the earth is about 6x10^24 kg or roughly 6,600,000,000,000,000 megatons (at normal gravity). It's not going to budge.

Answer 4

Yes it is possible. To do this, the world would have to quadruple in population and then we must all gather in one place of the earth, for example in the west coast of the U.S. After we have the entire world population gathered to one side of the earth we would then have to proceed to run at a ridiculously high speed at the same time, speed and pace so that we eventually take earth out of its orbit and into an orbit between mars and jupiter. Just curious, are you a physics or mathematics major at UCLA? I had a professor by the name of prof liggett there who asked this exact question when i was an undergrad student.

Answer 5

Yes it's possible. We're being hypothetical here right?

how can it be that a rocket, which implies a fuel source, be capable of moving an object that has such a massive.....mass?

The rocket would have to have a massive.....thrust
or medium thrust and it would have to run for a long, long time

Answer 6

Trouble is, the same applies to the universe. If time began with the beginning of the universe (being part of spacetime, rather than something that the universe exists in), then the origin of the universe was not 'confined to time' either. If the universe was not confined to time then there is no need to invoke a deity who is not confined to time as its creator.