Another Earth In Our Own Solar System.

How come no one has brought this up...

What if another earth was orbiting exactly on the other side of the sun....

The same distance from the sun as us...


+ O +

reply to post by Zaanny

What if another earth was orbiting exactly on the other side of the sun....

The same distance from the sun as us...

Because. As has been pointed out. Such an object would have effects on the orbits Venus and Mercury. Not to mention the fact that we have 2 spacecraft on the far side of the sun.
www.popsci.com...
stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov...

reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens

Well I guess if an other Earth "appeared in our solar system" the person in control of thermal underwear would be king on that planet.....

Seriously, where would it come from? Did it travel through space while being inhabited by 10 bil. humans? I guess they would be pretty well adapted to the cold and probably wouldn't like it very much in our goldilock zone.

Peace

Edit:

(it does not matter how, just that it happened).

ah, didn't read that part. You mean like pop up out of some parallel dimension? Weird hypothesis....

Originally posted by HomoSapiensSapiens
However, let us hypothesize - say I was writing a brief science fiction novel whereby an identical planet to Earth populated with about 10 billion humans appeared in our solar system by some freak "accident" (it does not matter how, just that it happened).

Sounds like a Fritz Leiber book,

en.wikipedia.org...

From the point of view of most of the population of the Earth, a new planet appears out of nothing close to the Moon, shortly after a total lunar eclipse. Over a period of few days the planet appears to consume the Moon. On Earth, the new planet's gravity causes death and destruction as it raises huge ocean tides and causes earthquakes and volcanic eruptions..

See the 1969 film Doppelgänger, also knows as Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (produced by Gerry Anderson of Space 1999, UFO, and Thunderbirds fame).

en.wikipedia.org...
www.imdb.com...


In that film, much like the recent film Another Earth that was mentioned before in this thread, the planet was identical to Earth -- although in Doppelgänger the duplicate Earth was literally a mirror-image (Yeah -- it's a bit of a fantasy, but it is sci-fi, so just go with it).

The Doppelgänger Earth in this case was like the "Gor" Earth, orbiting exactly opposite the earth on the other side of the Sun, and in the same orbit. However, (and to answer your question), as others have pointed out, that other Earth would screw with the orbits of Venus and Mercury (and Mars, I suppose), which would in turn mess with the entire balance of the rest of the Solar system -- Earth included.

Originally posted by mikegrouchy
I see three options, off the top of my head.

1) orbiting perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic


2) in orbit around Jupiter (or another Gas Giant)


3) Venus (see below)




km radius ------ Body

695,000 Sol

71,492 Jupiter
60,268 Saturn
25,559 Uranus
24,764 Neptune

6,372 Terra
6,051 Venus
5,321 Vesta
3,397 Mars
2,631 Ganymede
2,575 Titan
2,440 Mercury
2,410 Callisto
1,821 Io
1,738 Luna
1,560 Europa
1,360 Orcus
1,353 Triton
1,200 Eris
1,153 Pluto


Notice that Venus practically is Earth already.

Mike Grouchy

edit on 12-5-2013 by mikegrouchy because: (no reason given)

edit on 12-5-2013 by mikegrouchy because: (no reason given)

edit on 12-5-2013 by mikegrouchy because: (no reason given)

Not sure Vesta, if you mean Vesta4, is quite that big....

Let's see... I would have to say... The best place for an Earth twin where it would not cause harm to our solar.system, would be... Somewhere way out by Pluto. Can it swallow.Pluto as a second moon? As long as all bodies stay intact and in their same approximate recognizable orbits, then its not causing any harm, right? So maybe you start it on the opposite side of Pluto, and when they eventually meet, it swallows Pluto into orbit. you could also try putting it in a dual orbit system with the earth, with the moon harmoniously balanced at the center.

How much had we discover about our own solar system in depth? Very little.

There are many moons out there that may be earthlike. Titan, although is not Earth, is one such moon that may be how our planet was formed at theinitial stage as it had the right ingredients for life, and only a recent discovery with probes, as much as some scientists claimed that there is all that is to be discovered.

There are still many more out there, and while may not inhabit life or is like our planet in any way, there may be pockets of it that can be terraformed on a limited basis to sustain life, such as near the poles whereby water seems evident in most planets and larger moons.

And not to mention the huge amount of mineral resources abound just in our solar system alone, for contruction of habitats, sustain life and even trade once we can achieve decent speeds close to speed of light at lower costs. And for all that to happen, we need MORE humans, perhaps 10 times as much as today to tap that wealth and opportunity for all.