• Question: When do you think that the earth will coulide with another planet or a black hole and what will happen?

    Asked by leo to Sallie, Jade, Hannah, Cathal, Anthony on 8 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Sallie Baxendale

      Sallie Baxendale answered on 8 Mar 2017:

      I think its more likely that the earth will be burnt up by the sun expanding as it loses it gravity, than another planet hitting us. But that wont happen for a very very long time. As a rule planets tend to stay out of each others way. We need to be more worried about asteroids hitting us than planets I think.

    • Photo: Anthony Caravaggi

      Anthony Caravaggi answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      The Earth will be burned by our sun (Sol) expanding as it gets old in a few billion years, long before there’s any chance of collision with another planet or black hole.

      But! If the Earth did collide with a planet, the amount of damage would depend on the size of the planet compared to Earth. A little planet like Pluto (I know it’s not called a planet any more, but I’m using it as an example) would probably only destroy most of Earth and annihilate the other planet. A bigger planet would smash the Earth to bits. A gas giant like Jupiter would just swallow the Earth and destroy it with compression.

      Similarly, if the Earth went into a black hole, it would be compressed to a very, very small size due to the strength of gravity in the black hole.

      Either way, there’s no happy ending in either of those scenarios.

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