# How would the absence of the other planets affect Earth? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 5, 2005, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463 "2005-02-05T01:26:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/1 "2005-02-05T01:26:29Z")
Let’s say Q decided to rid our solar system of all the other planets (they just disappear instantly), how would their absence affect Earth, if at all? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/2 "2005-02-05T02:25:43Z")
Really, all it’d do is make the night skies a little less interesting. The only things in the Solar System which have any measureable affect on the Earth are the Sun and the Moon. Well, and any object which happens to collide with the Earth: They have an effect, too. But none of the planets are likely to do that any time soon. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/3 "2005-02-05T02:28:00Z")
> [@Mr. Blue Sky](#): > > Let’s say Q decided to rid our solar system of all the other planets (they just disappear instantly), how would their absence affect Earth, if at all? Well, mythology would suffer greatly, and it’d probably be disastrous to mechanics (and thus to all modern mathematics and physics) not to have had such nicely-behaved toy systems to observe. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/4 "2005-02-05T02:42:17Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Really, all it’d do is make the night skies a little less interesting. The only things in the Solar System which have any measureable affect on the Earth are the Sun and the Moon. Well, and any object which happens to collide with the Earth: They have an effect, too. But none of the planets are likely to do that any time soon. IIRC Jupiter has a small but measurable influence on Earth’s orbit – if any of the other planets do, it’s so miniscule as to be not worth mentioning, but Jupiter’s enormous mass and _relative_ propinquity do cause a tiny but significant change from what Sun/Moon alone would do. ---
**Author:** ![Scruloose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e68b1a/32.png) [@Scruloose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scruloose)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/5 "2005-02-05T02:45:42Z")
I seem to remember hearing somewhere that other planets, Jupiter in particular, are extremely useful in absorbing meteors and such. IIRC, Jupiter was called the solar system’s “Vacuum Cleaner”. The point being that we’d be kinda screwed without it. Any astronomy buffs care to opine on that? ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/6 "2005-02-05T02:49:13Z")
Astrologers would go out of business overnight (unless they predicted everything in advance, of course) 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Scruloose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e68b1a/32.png) [@Scruloose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scruloose)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/7 "2005-02-05T02:52:45Z")
Google is my friend. Googling “Jupiter vacuum cleaner” turns up quite a few references. > [@](#): > > Jupiter weighs three times more than all the other planets combined. Its great mass causes it to act like an enormous cosmic vacuum cleaner. Its gravitational influence attracted much of the debris in the early solar system. Without this thinning effect on the asteroid population the Earth would have suffered a much more severe bombardment from space during its history. Repeated catastrophic impacts would have almost certainly prevented the evolution of intelligent life. Without Jupiter guarding over us, we wouldn’t exist! [http://www.solarsystem.org.uk/jupiter/](http://www.solarsystem.org.uk/jupiter/) > [@](#): > > Jupiter is a giant planet, the largest in the solar system, and one that exerts a powerful influence far beyond its own orbit. It frequently disturbs and in some cases directly controls the orbits of many comets and asteroids, and over eons it has served as a “vacuum cleaner” that has deflected or tossed out of the solar system many comets that might otherwise have struck Earth [http://www.space.com/reference/jupiter/overview.html](http://www.space.com/reference/jupiter/overview.html) Sounds like it was a good thing to have Jupiter around all these years. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/8 "2005-02-05T03:10:21Z")
> [@Scruloose](#): > > Sounds like it was a good thing to have Jupiter around all these years. “Don’t it always seem to go/ You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Odinoneeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/97f17d/32.png) [@Odinoneeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odinoneeye)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/9 "2005-02-05T03:25:58Z")
> [@Tapioca Dextrin](#): > > Astrologers would go out of business overnight (unless they predicted everything in advance, of course) 😃 Nah, they’re probably make their predictions based on the movements of turtles or sand grains. Most people would still fall for it. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![LucyInDisguise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucyindisguise/32/18064_2.png) [@LucyInDisguise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LucyInDisguise)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/10 "2005-02-05T17:14:14Z")
> [@Odinoneeye](#): > > Nah, they’re probably make their predictions based on the movements of turtles or sand grains … Probably be a lot more accurate … 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/11 "2005-02-05T17:18:28Z")
> [@Scruloose](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Jupiter is a giant planet, the largest in the solar system, and one that exerts a powerful influence far beyond its own orbit. It frequently disturbs and in some cases directly controls the orbits of many comets and asteroids, and over eons it has served as a “vacuum cleaner” that has deflected or tossed out of the solar system many comets that might otherwise have struck Earth > > Sounds like it was a good thing to have Jupiter around all these years. Yeah, yeah, but what has it done for use **lately**? ---
**Author:** ![qubed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f07891/32.png) [@qubed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qubed)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/12 "2005-02-05T17:28:17Z")
> [@Steve MB](#): > > Yeah, yeah, but what has it done for use **lately**? Well, it did absorb the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994. But I don’t suppose that would have collided with Earth anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/13 "2005-02-05T17:35:02Z")
> [@alanak](#): > > Well, it did absorb the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994. But I don’t suppose that would have collided with Earth anyway. Most orbits tend to be rather ergodic in the long run. Eventually it would have hit us. Jupiter’s just so big that it’s more likely something’s going to hit it first than us. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/14 "2005-02-05T18:16:57Z")
> [@Odinoneeye](#): > > Nah, they’re probably make their predictions based on the movements of turtles or sand grains. > > Most people would still fall for it. ☹ Well, in certain circumstances, fortune-telling based on the movements of turtles would be scientifically accurate. Discworld, for example! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/15 "2005-02-05T19:49:10Z")
We would not have suffered the depradation of all the various Martian assaults on the Earth from the War of the Worlds througfh Mars Attacks (to say nothing of our losses because Mars needs women). ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/16 "2005-02-05T23:33:44Z")
> [@Mr. Blue Sky](#): > > Let’s say Q decided to rid our solar system of all the other planets (they just disappear instantly), how would their absence affect Earth, if at all? Well, I guess the annual Solar System Ball would be a real bummer. No dance partner for Mother Earth. I mean, geez, shew would have to take the Moon, _again!_ Then all the psychology book aisles would be devoid of good books such as _Women Are From umm, umm / Men Are From umm, umm_ ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/17 "2005-02-05T23:38:32Z")
> [@Duckster](#): > > Then all the psychology book aisles would be devoid of good books such as _Women Are From umm, umm / Men Are From umm, umm_ Aha! A benefit! ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2005, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/18 "2005-02-06T00:10:00Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > “Don’t it always seem to go/ > You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” 🙂 “Razed orbit paths/ Here comes a great big rock. Oooooh bup bup bup bup” ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2005, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/19 "2005-02-06T09:45:38Z")
My Very Excellent Mother Just **Never** Served Us Nine Pizzas, because there would have been no reason for that mnemonic to be invented. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2005, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463/20 "2005-02-06T19:23:11Z")
> [@](#): > > Yeah, yeah, but what has it done for use lately? This was rather the point of my post. We did need Jupiter at the start of the Solar System, to clean up all the debris (unless that was all just magicked away, too). But now that most of the debris is gone, if it were to disappear now, no big deal. There are still some comets and other risky objects, and most of those will eventually hit something, but even then, if the Solar System were devoid of all objects save for the Sun, Earth, Moon, and comets, I suspect that more of those would hit the Sun than the Earth. In fact, even with all the planets in place, falling into the Sun is still by far the most common cause of death for comets: As I recall, about one comet a day ends up hitting the Sun. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-the-absence-of-the-other-planets-affect-earth/288463.md?page=2)