Would the lack of a planet mess up other planets orbits?

Question

Suppose the Earth or any planet was completely destroyed by an alien attack or whatever. Would the lack of a planet mess up other planets orbits?

Answer 1

The one planet I can think of whose loss would cause a *major* impact is Jupiter. Jupiter deflects many space objects away from hitting Earth and it stabilizes the orbits of the outer planets.

Answer 2

If it was earth that was being destoryed then no, but I'm sure there are other planets that would greatly effect our solar sysem if they weren't there. For example, Jupiter was once hit by a comet known as Shoemaker-Libi 9. With out Jupiter, there's no telling where this comet could have ended up. In the end, there are probably more important planets than Earth.

Answer 3

I don't think if aliens came and destroyed earth that anyone would care about the other planets.

Rationally I would expec the effect to be negligible. The moon causes tides but you've never heard anyone talk about mars causing tides. Similarly, every so often the planets line up and the OMG'ers predict end of the world but nada. So you would have to conclude there's not much effect from other planets on earth. Lose one, and as long as you don't rain us with comet debris, we wouldnt notice.

Answer 4

There would be little effect on other planets. The sun has 98% of the mass of the solar system and thus 98% of the gravitational effect on the solar system. A planet, like the Earth or even Jupiter, has such a small gravitational effect on other planets that missing one of them would have no measurable effect on the others.

Answer 5

All the planets and other objects like asteroids, comets, etc., interact gravitationally with one another. If any object were to be removed, there would be some effect on the orbits of the remaining objects. How great a change depends on how massive the removed object was.

Answer 6

NO because we orbit the sun. If the sun was destroyed, we'd have some serious issues.