what if venus and earth collide?

Question

supposing that the earth had a more circular orbit.
what would be the difference between having venus collide with the earth's ocean, versus colliding with land.
best and worst-case scenarios, please.

Answer 1

boom... all life ends. simple

Answer 2

If your concern is whether hitting the ocean instead of land makes a difference, then Obviousman's answer is... obvious, man.

Giving Earth a more circular orbit does not lead to a collision scenario. The two orbits are separated by a distance which, on average, is over 41 million km (almost 26 million miles).

Even taking the eccentricity of the elliptical orbits into account, the closest they ever get is still over 37 million km.

If the two planets were on the same orbit (let us say Earth's orbit) and going in opposite direction (Earth going 29.8 km/s one way, Venus going 29.8 km/s the other way), then the relative speed of the collision would be a little more than 59.6 km/s (there would be slighly more speed from last minute gravitational attraction than there would be braking from hitting the 16 km outer crust of Earth -- crushing 16 km would take a quarter of a second).

By the time the collision has absorbed enough energy for the planets to slow down, each planet would be more than halfway through the other.

But it would take a lot of energy to turn Venus around AND place it on Earth's orbit.

Answer 3

you'd need some huge external force to get the Earth and Venus to come on collision course. Even collisions with the heaviest asteroids known would have no effect (on the orbits - they would on the comfort of Earthlings). You'd need the attraction of some giant planet, or a huge push from some giant super-advanced spacecraft. Bottom-line, if won't happen.

Now if it did happen, it obviously would be very bad news, and it would not make a difference whether Venus fell in the ocean, or on land. Venus has a size similar to the Earth, about 12'800km in diameter, and the oceans are less than 1/1000th of that, at their deepest point!

Anyway, before the collision you'd have massive tidal effects that would tend to rip some of the stuff of both planets apart. Then after the crash, the dust in the atmosphere causing nuclear winter, the mix of atmospheres (Venus' is poisonous to us), the crash of both crusts freeing up magma, the likely change in axis / rotation, most likely most life on Earth would have disappeared, but probably not all.

So life could start again, on what, most likely, would be a new, larger planet (because both planets are thin crusts on molten cores, and the shape that minimizes gravitational potential is a sphere). And maybe a billion years later or so, you'd have another intelligent race on it?

Answer 4

Any collision between Earth and Venus would kill all life on Earth and probably break the planet into a cloud of asteroids. There is no best case scenario, all collisions with something as big as Venus, which is the same size as the Earth, are extremely bad. But there is no chance of that happening since Venus and Earth are in stable orbits far from each other.

Answer 5

I'm not sure how you could collide with the ocean and not the land since Venus is almost the same size as Earth. If a 10 mile diameter asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, something the size of Venus would wipe out everything. Both planets would be pulverized and after millions of years form back into a single planet again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Worlds_Collide

Answer 6

First, there is absolutely no way Earth and Venus could collide, unless something nearly as massive as one of those planet would impact with either Earth or Venus to send it in an intercept orbit with the other planet.

Now, as far as colliding Earth and a Venus sized object is considered, there would not be any difference if the impact is in the ocean or on land: both planets would be TOTALLY destroyed. Venus is about the same mass as Earth. The debris from the collision would remain in proximity and would progressively coalesce and form a planet nearly twice as massive as Earth is now as it would combine both planets into one.

Answer 7

for one, it's not going to happen, as both the earth and Venus are in steady orbits. the closest opposition that earth comes to Venus is about 24 million miles. The moon is over 100 times closer than that. The Moon isn't gonna hit us either.
An Asteroid or a comet several miles wide hitting the earth would have grave consequences.
Two planets the same size colliding?????????????????

Answer 8

best case scenario: Both planets would be nothing but space dust and we won't ever have to listen to political advertisements or telemarketers ever again.

worst case scenario: Both planets would be nothing but space dust, but somehow the lawyers survive. Bring a towel.

C'mon, we're talking planets of approximately the same size, with massive (to us) proportions. How deep is the deepest part of the ocean? A couple of miles maybe? Even if its 10 miles, that's a far cry from 8,000 miles. It's more of a "skin" than anything else, so the difference is irrelevant. Kind of like the difference between getting struck by a car at 100 mph or 100.001 mph. Makes no difference, you're still dead.

Answer 9

a collision of such size may result in what we observe with the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter, hence its very unlikely that this would ever happen, since orbits of earth and venus are stable since millions of years. in case it would happen: 1. the orbit and rest of the solar system would be uneffected since the sun is the dominant mass. 2. atmoshere vanishes cause there is no more concentrated mass holding it to the ground with its gravity 3. no atmosphere no more weather 4. oO ... what has this to do with lawyers and schools ? a crash of that size is unsurvivable, no more lawyers, no more schools and noone left who remembers

Answer 10

Best case scenario: we get a new planet called Venarth.
Worst case scenario: we get a new asteroid belt called Earnus.
Real case scenario: it ain't gonna happen so why think about it.

Answer 11

Best Case Scenario - No school tomorrow.

Worst Case Scenario - No more school - ever.