What If Planet X Entered Our Solar System?

the solar system it's no longer about the eight main planets anymore sorry Pluto a new planet has entered the fry and it's hurling toward Earth at first it looks small but then it starts to get closer and closer that's when you realize it's bigger than Earth it's a massive gas giant just like Jupiter as this mysterious planet approaches its magnetosphere will interact with Earth this will create a lot of thunderstorms as well as some beautiful auroras in the sky but the beauty wouldn't last long before you know it waves would rise high in the ocean

pulled by the new planet's gravitational force earthquakes would spread all across earth you'd find it harder to breathe as our atmosphere gets pulled away because of this new gravitational pull Earth is breaking apart into chunks all living things on our planet are enveloped in cold and dark life on Earth is over but wait a second how did we get here could a new planet form in our solar system or could it wander in and affect the Earth's orbit maybe there's an undiscovered Planet already out there this is what if and here's what would happen if

we discovered a new planet in our solar system okay before we fish for more of these answers let me show you an awesome game I've been playing fishing Clash the sponsor of today's episode you know I really like fishing but as you can see I'm making videos for you guys and don't get to spend as much time on the water as I'd like to but with fishing Clash I can get the fishing experience right for my phone it's cool you can strategize and use different pieces of equipment to catch all kinds of fish Marlin salmon

bass trout and more you can also play in different locations around the world and even create your own fishing Village one of my favorite features comes from fishing Clash partnering up with Major League Fishing I love it you get the thrill of competing in real life MLF events and winning in-game rewards there's also duel daily competitions and Clans want to play well then go ahead and scan the QR code or check out the link in the description to download fishing clash and then once you're in the game use my code what if for a free

$20 gift you can get special items and fish to help you get started to redeem the code just follow the steps on screen and type in the code what if to receive your in-game rewards okay before we get to any new planets first let's figure out where our current ones come from well the answer lies in the Stars when a new star is born it's enveloped in gas and dust this spins into a donut-shaped disc planets start off as minuscule grains of dust even smaller than the width of a single strand of hair hard to

believe I know but it's true due to gravity and other forces the tiny particles in the spinning disc collide these collisions can make the dust Clump together first into pebble-sized chunks and then into bigger rocks these are planetesimals now if we wait a couple more billion years this is how the planets in our solar system formed well no not anymore because after about 3 to 10 million years solar winds from our sun blew away all the dust and gas used to make new planets with the gas and dust dispersed into space there's no chance of

forming new planets in our solar system if we did discover a new planet it would be one that's already out there we just need to find it well luckily for us there's speculation that a new planet might already exist in our solar system this is planet 9 based on scientists calculations it may be sitting in the outer regions of our solar system orbiting our sun so why didn't we know that this planet exists did we just not see it because it's small no estimates put Planet 9 at the size of Neptune with a mass of

maybe 10 times that of Earth we've missed it all this time because of its highly elongated orbit this has put it at a distance in our solar system that even further than Pluto it doesn't really affect Earth it's its orbital path is 400 to 800 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun and the time it takes for Planet 9 to make a full revolution around the Sun 10,000 to 20,000 Earth years given this massive orbit well how did scientists even figure out it exists well they looked closely at the Kyper belt situated Beyond

NEP tun this circumstellar disc contains asteroids comets and other icy objects but scientists noticed something weird was going on here some of the dwarf planets and icy objects had orbits that clustered together in an unusual way this could be explained if there was a mystery planet exerting its gravitational force causing these objects to Cluster could it be Planet 9 well we're not totally sure if it exists theoretically it does but we haven't directly seen it yet now this could change with the construction of the powerful Vera C ruin observatory in Chile it will be searching

the [Music] skies but if a planet can't form and we're not totally sure about planet 9 then what are our options for finding a new planet in our solar system well there could be a rogue Planet a rogue Planet well isn't that a planet that wears a rakish hat and an i pad and a leather jacket not quite rogue planets are similar to regular planets only they're not tied to a star they first form around a young star but then they might get kicked out of their solar system this ejection could happen while different sized

objects are whizzing past each other around the star the heavier Planet whizzing by may stay in orbit throwing a planet with a lower Mass out that's one way a rogue is formed another way is when a star formation goes wrong maybe the star doesn't ignite and instead becomes a solitary gas giant how many rogue planets could there be in our Milky Way galaxy well one estimate puts it in the billions but we don't know for sure that's because rogue planets are very hard to detect they give off very little light and at wavelengths incredibly hard

to distinguish from background emissions so what would happen if one of these rogue planets suddenly entered our solar system well that would depend on a couple of different factors the velocity of the planet its size and its trajectory now we've already looked at what would happen if a Jupiter sized planet was headed for Earth that was pretty ugly but what if instead of this planet smashing into US it just wandered close to Earth well that all depends on what we mean by close if a Rogue gas giant the size of Jupiter was wandering even three

million kilometers away from Earth well terrible things would happen since Jupiter is 300 times the mass of Earth it exerts an incredible gravitational force as the planet got closer we'd feel the effects of its magnetosphere it would be filled with charged particles made up of electrons protons and tons of radiation then it would come for us here on Earth destroying life on the planet as this huge Planet got even closer massive tidal waves would rise up causing catastrophic floods so if the radiation hasn't killed us off yet we'd drown then Earth would crack open volcanoes

would erupt lava everywhere apocalyptic stuff okay so note to self no welcoming any Rogue Jupiters into our neighborhood not even for a swing by but forget these gas giants what about something smaller say an earth-sized planet that snuck into our solar system or a Pluto sized dwarf planet let's explore these options well if either of these planets were on a collision course with Earth things would get pretty rough a 100 km wide asteroid that crashes into us would end all life on Earth and even the dwarf planet Pluto is 2200 km wide making a head-on

collision with us devastating now if they didn't collide with us and collided with Mars or Venus instead Well we'd probably get showered with debris from the Collision if the debris is small and by small I mean less than 1 km wide Humanity would pull through with just some local damage but a bigger asteroid could have devastating effects remember the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago it was only 10 to 20 km wide and still it was goodbye T-Rex and goodbye to most life on Earth but what are the odds of actually

getting hit by a rogue Planet well one estimate puts it in the likelihood of less than one in two trillion within the next 1,000 years [Music] so what if another planet Mercury or earth-sized swung by close to us well another planet swinging by could produce a similar effect to that of the Moon it could alter our tidal forces in significant ways but it all depends on the planet's size mass and the distance away from us let's say a rogue Planet the size of mercury decided to pass by well Mercury is about 1 and A2 times

the size of our moon so its effect on our tithes would be stronger than what we see today but what if it got closer well if it were half the distance of our moon it would cause high tides more than eight times higher than today's floods would overwhelm our coastal cities but that's not all Mercury would also be exerting a pull on Earth's land causing earthquakes and volcanoes again now what if it was another Earth passing by well depending on where you were standing you might see it above you then you'd be in an unusual

situation in the middle of two equally large masses each planet would exert an equal pull on you you'd be in zero gravity you as well as most of the other stuff on Earth surface would start floating fun the bad news is our atmosphere would float away way everything would come loose ocean crust bits of mantle that cause debris to float between the planets and this debris would begin to orbit the planets too both our Earth and the other Earth would lose a lot of energy and slow down eventually they Collide okay now how about another

much more fun possibility like could another Earth jump into our orbit and co-orbit with us that could be cool maybe we'd have another place to call home maybe the Two Earths would share the same circular orbit but there's another intriguing possibility co-orbiting Earths might follow horseshoe orbits each planet orbits the Sun in its own horseshoe track with the two half circles facing each other while this might sound unlikely we do observe real life horseshoe orbits Saturn's moon Janis and Epimetheus follow horseshoe orbits about 150,000 km from the planet So in theory if we had Two

Earths they could orbit in this horseshoe pattern now how long would it take to travel along our horseshoe and come near our twin one estimate puts it at about 33 years and with neither Earth completing a full revolution around the Sun well one of us would be in Perpetual Summer and the other In Perpetual winter I know which one I want to live in now the chance of this happening with a new rogue planet that just wandered by probably close to zero but I got to say booking a vacation on another Earth does sound pretty

cool so let's say we discover a new planet inside our solar system and lucky for us it's not going to hit any of our planets are we safe what if it's heading for a direct collision with the sun well then there are three possibilities depending on the crash site and the momentum with which the crash happens the Collision could happen in the outermost layer of the sun if a planet the size of Jupiter crashed into the sun it would give off an incredible amount of kinetic energy it could make the sun brighter for tens of

thousands of years another possibility is a crash right into the center of the sun now if this happened there would be less energy in the outer layer and smaller effects on the sun's brightness but here's another scenario what if for some reason rolling Jupiter slowed down as it approached the sun well then there would be less kinetic energy to transfer the planet would get shredded its core might form a disc around the giant ball of fire blocking the Sun's light the amount of sunlight reaching Earth could be reduced by up to 20% in addition the

amount of the sun's radiation hitting Earth would change it's unclear whether it would increase or decrease all depends on the type of disc that forms another frightening scenario that could happen what if a new rogue planet in our solar system shoved Earth out of orbit if this happened there are a number of things that could change with Earth having a new orbital path our Seasons would differ significantly maybe we'd experience a new Ice Age or our summers would become scalding hot the second is a change to our orbital plane the flat dis shaped space that

all the planets orbit in popping out of that plane would mean we'd fall out of step with the other planets once this happens over time we might get more and more out of sink who knows this might lead to us eventually wandering out of the solar system outside of our current orbit the earth might take longer to go around the sun we might have to add a 13th month to our calendar or maybe we just give February a few more days but a big shove might actually eject us from the solar system altogether if this

happened well obviously we'd lose our sun and we'd freeze and die or if you were shoved out of orbit and bumped toward the sun well things would get pretty hot and we'd fry I don't know about you but after looking at all these possibilities I'm feeling pretty happy that we haven't discovered new planets wandering around in our solar system yeah there's Planet n but right now that's just a mysterious possibility we're putting up a sign for new planets to stay away collisions are catastrophic near misses are deadly and pushing us off our orbit would bring

on an Ice Age even if a new planet self annihilates into the sun it could be a problem the only possibility I like us and another Earth in horseshoe orbits within the goldilock Zone Endless Summer I hear it's super unlikely but if we absolutely have to encounter a rogue Planet I'm holding out for that one but what if instead of a new planet finding us we ventured out of the solar system to find one ourselves there are some that could actually be a better version of our Earth but that sounds like a story for another

what if and before you go don't forget to download fishing Clash by by clicking on the link in the description or scanning the QR code and remember to use my code what if for a special in-game reward [Music]