Could another Earth sized planet follow 3 months behind in our orbital plane without affecting us?

Question

It would be about 100 to 150 million miles away, but following us. I know Mars comes within 30 to 40 million miles and has no effect at all on us at all, but it is much smaller of course.

Answer 1

NO ....... THE GRAVITATIONAL PULL OF THE PLANET WILL SURELY AFFECT LIFE ON EARTH.....

1] THE TIDES CAUSED BY IT ..... WOULD BY ITSELF WIPE OUT LIFE ON EARTH

2] THE ROTATION AND REVOLUTION WILL BE AFFECTED

Answer 2

A smaller planet could be 60 degrees ahead or behind us (60/360 * 12 months = 2 months) without affecting us, other than making our orbit a tiny bit more stable (not that we need it).

These positions are called Lagrangian positions (from the mathematician Lagrange who calculated these things).

If you want Earth-sized planets, you would need 6 of them, all 60 degrees apart, with an orbit that is more circular than the one we have now (it does not need to be perfect).  Each planet is at the Lagrangian position of its closest neighbours.

At that distance, the tides would not be important (tidal effect varies with the CUBE of the distance).

Answer 3

If a planet was at the L4 or L5 lagrange points it might be OK.

Basically the Lagrange points are where the gravitational influence of the sun and the earth are equal.

For jupiter - the L4 and L5 points contain asteroids in a stable orbit.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_po...

The Lagrange points are locate 60 degrees away from the earth.

If another earth was in that position, our earth would also be in its lagrange point - so it might just work.

60 degrees is only 1/6 of a circle - so I think that it would have to be 2 months behind or ahead in orbit

Answer 4

Um...................No

Answer 5

Not so much. The gravitational attraction between two objects in space would cause our planet to slow in its orbit around the sun and cause that planet to speed up towards us at the same rate. This would most definitely cause global changes to the tides and more importantly the climate. As the orbit around the earth would slow, this would the earth into an initial elliptical orbit closer to the sun and venus which would boil off all the water and kill off everything on the planet. The other planet would accelerate moving it into an initial elliptical orbit towards mars. I would advise booking the first flight off the planet.

Answer 6

I not sure about exactly where all five Lagrange point are, but two of them are in the orbital path of a planet. Jupiter has the Trojan asteroids directly ahead and behind it in its orbit. They are stable and don't wander away. They are in both the orbital Lagrange points of Jupiter. Earth threfore could also have an object in one of its orbital Lagrange points and be stable. Years ago there was a movie about a sister planet of earth located directly opposite the sun. We never knew about it until we sent a spacecraft to that particular area. Neat movie, but forgot the name of it.