What would happen if a rogue, Jupiter sized planet entered our solar system...?

Question

and crashed into one of our planets (excluding Earth, I know what that would mean), or our sun. What if one passed through our system, without hitting anything?

For clarity, this is what I mean by "rogue planet"

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

Also, I don't care about the odds of it happening, I just want to know what would happen.

Answer 1

That is a too general question; it depends on the orbit.

The result though would be not nice for humanity nor the rest of the planets.

Early in the formation of the universe it was full of cosmic debris and the forming earth was under constant bombardment by comets and asteroids.  That may be how the first water and life based proteins were sent to earth.  The problem is that the planets all looked like the moon does; craters on craters; on craters.

Trying to live a life under these circumstances would be next to impossible.  Even if you lived at the bottom of a mine shaft the earthquakes and pollution would still kill you off.

That is the LEAST problem that would happen if a rouge planet got lose in our system.  The more unlucky version would be if it disrupted the orbit of the earth sending it spinning out into space, or crashing into the sun; a planetary orbit is a dance on the edge of the line of death with a slight orbital shift causing the earth to slip into another ice age or become a burning molten surface pile of slag.

The worst that could happen was proposed in the movie “When Worlds Collide.”  With a title like that I think you know enough about what would happen.  A Jupiter sized rogue planet would swallow the earth; it would give it a major case of industrial sized stomach ache and make the giant red spot look like a tiny swimming pool, but the gas giant would survive the collision; the earth would not.   If the planet was lucky it would be given a glancing blow and just melted into a ball of cooling liquid, if not then the planet just wouldn’t be period.

The asteroid belt used to be a planet, but when it formed the gravitational tug of Jupiter and Mars destroyed it.  One of those pieces, about the size of Mars smashed into the Earth and spun off a piece that eventually cooled into the moon we know of today.

There is a theory that the storm of comets and asteroids that occasionally hit our planet could be caused by our unseen dwarf star companion Nemesis.  This slightly larger than Jupiter failed star is theorized to be orbiting the sun at some huge distance and its minor gravity tugs are responsible for unleashing dinosaur killer asteroids on the planets in the system.

There is no proof of the existence of Nemesis:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_%28...

But the collision of the Earth that created the moon has been traced back in time to its origin.  This theory is pretty well accepted, but not totally and not proven:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Format...  However, it does explain why the Earth and the Moon have so much in common and why our rocks look like their rocks.

So a Jupiter sized Rogue planet, for that matter an Earth sized Rogue Planet entering our solar system would spell disaster for humanity.  Death by orbital change, death by asteroid bombardment; death by collision; or death by being tossed off for who knows where each case has one word in common ‘death.’

We are not sure how Neptune and Uranus formed; they are too far out to have formed by normal nebula collapse.  Instead they have to be closer to our sun and later migrated outward.  The only thing that could cause that would be the interaction with another gravity field; like a passing star or a rogue planet; unless somehow the gravity of our sun suddenly changed, like maybe the collision of a massive planetoid?   That last one is a pretty wild theory, but the idea of a rouge planet in the Sol system is both a very real and probable idea and a scary one.  I don’t want to see it happen, ever.

If stars and planets form by collapsing nebulas then there is no reason why a rogue planet, without a home star can’t form out of a small nebula.  Such a planet would tend to be a pretty large one and Jupiter is just quite not large enough to become a star.  Also binary star systems or systems with a very large companion planet seem to be very common.  We have found 300 Jupiter sized planets by using a method that so narrow it is like looking at the world through a tiny pinhole.  Planetary detection requires the planet to be in an orbit exactly perpendicular to that of the earth so the wobble in the star can be noticed.

Of if a rogue planet was headed our way we wouldn’t know until the effects of its gravity started changing our solar system; by then the worse would be happening and it would be too late.  Your Jupiter size rogue would sneak up on us like a 200 lb black gorilla at night and we would be deaf and not notice it until it started smashing or moving things around or throwing things at us.  Your scenario could be happening right this moment and we wouldn’t know until it was too late.  How is that for a scary image?

As for the odds, we don't know of a single rogue planet, we have no idea how many, if any exist so we have no way to predict the odds it could be 50% or 1 in one billion or somewhere in between or somewhere wildly outside of those odds.

Answer 2

It would probably disturb the equilibrium of our galaxy, causing catastophic changes.

Answer 3

Even if it didn't crash into any planets, its gravity would mess up the orbits of all the planets in the solar system. If it came close to Earth (or any planet) but didn't hit, it could even throw Earth (or whatever planet is passed close by) out of the solar system by a gravitational slingshot effect similar to what NASA did when they flew the New Horizons space craft close past Jupiter to get the extra speed they needed to make it go all the way to Pluto.

Answer 4

it would probably be caught by jupiters gravity pull and they would slam eachother then abunch of rocks flying around then form a mega planet

Answer 5

If it crashed into one of the planets, it would destroy that planet (and probably do a lot of damage to itself).

The debris from the collision could send meteors of all sizes all through the solar system, some would threaten the Earth.

If it crashed into the sun, it wouldn't do much damage to the sun, except that there would be a significant explosion/flare at the point of impact and this could cause coronal mass ejections and a wildly-disrupted solar magnetic field and wind.  These could threaten the Earth.

A Jupiter-sized world could enter and leave our solar system and not pass anywhere near any planets - the planets are not all on the same side of the sun, and there is a lot of space between their orbits.

So its possible that it could simply pass through and not affect any of the planets at all, though it might (depending on its trajectory) disturb asteroids in the asteroid belt (and send some of them our way).

Answer 6

It is impossible.

Answer 7

Well, first we have to consider the density, the speed and gravity of the planet, if the planet is the small then it will go on a collision course with the nearest planet while moving towards the sun...if the planet is big, then it will still go towards a collision course with the sun, but, it will consume, or collide with all the smaller planets by attracting them by its gravity. IN SHORT: ''DOOMS DAY FOR MANKIND!''

Answer 8

It would depend on the nature of the collision. If a Jupiter collided with Mars, it would consume it. If it collided with the Sun, it would be consumed.

And about the odds: I'm not losing any sleep over it. The odds are astronomically better that you get struck by lightning while reading this than that any stellar collision has ever happened in the entire history of the galaxy disk.