# Jupiter shifts orbit, Earth goes rogue...what happens? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 22, 2013, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938 "2013-10-22T16:28:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Man_In_Black)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2013, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938/41 "2013-10-25T16:54:07Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Did anyone else get confused and think I meant the average temperature of Pluto was a hundred and fifty degrees above the boiling point of water? What else does “369 F” mean? If it has another meaning, I’d like to know. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2013, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938/42 "2013-10-25T18:33:53Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > From where? It’s already all on the ground, below the chimney. Technically it would be more of a snorkel then. If you froze the Earth’s atmosphere, I wonder how deep it would be? > [@The\_Man\_In\_Black](#): > > What else does “369 F” mean? If it has another meaning, I’d like to know. A reasonable person would realize that I simply forgot the minus sign. Given the location of Pluto and all. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2013, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938/43 "2013-10-25T20:35:02Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > You’d have to design completely self contained airtight and heated Biospheres that have their own eco system in balance. We’ve never successfully made one of those and we don’t really know how to. Two things might help here; the ecosystem on a rogue planet wouldn’t necessarily be closed, since it has a whole planet of resources to rely on, including the internal heat of the planet. Secondly we couldn’t even attempt such a colony unless we had hundreds, or thousands, of years of experience with closed ecological life support systems. It would be a poor show if we couldn’t exploit the resources of a whole frozen planet with a warm interior to support a modest population. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2013, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938/44 "2013-10-25T20:37:50Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Technically it would be more of a snorkel then. > > If you froze the Earth’s atmosphere, I wonder how deep it would be? > . 11.6 metres, apparently. ---
**Author:** ![EdwardLost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@EdwardLost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardLost)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2013, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938/45 "2013-10-25T22:32:32Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I can possibly see earthquakes and floods due to tidal forces caused by a mass large enough to dislodge the Earth from it’s orbit. I don’t think there would be a “jerk” though. Agreed. The Earth is never not in free-fall. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@The\_Man\_In\_Black](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Man_In_Black)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938/46 "2013-10-26T02:42:34Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > A reasonable person would realize that I simply forgot the minus sign. Given the location of Pluto and all. Which is what I said in my first post when I poked fun at you for it. A reasonable person have realized that. You made it sound like you meant to write it that way and that I just didn’t understand it. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938/47 "2013-10-26T04:41:34Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > 11.6 metres, apparently. Which the story allowed for. The Nest is in the 4th or 5th story of the building it’s in. But the problem with that is the atmosphere will go through a liquid phase as it cools. First oxygen will condense out, then nitrogen. Since they are liquids, they’ll flow downhill and collect in the lowest areas. That means it’ll mainly end up on top of former bodies of water but also in various local depressions such as ditches and holes. There won’t be a nice even 11.6 meter layer of frozen gases all over the planet. as the story has. As far as floods, ok I was wrong to include that. If the dark star raises tides greater than the Moon’s, there’ll be flooding in coastal areas. But earthquakes are another matter. Tides don’t cause earthquakes, at least the Moon’s tides do not. You’d have to get tides a hell of a lot bigger than the Moon’s to cause earthquakes. I know it’s a common meme in SF stories that a planet coming close to another will cause earthquakes, but unless one body gets close to the Hill radius of the other, they probably won’t happen. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938/48 "2013-10-26T08:56:04Z")
Tidal effects do cause significant heating in many moons and planets, such as Io and, presumably, the detected planets around Gliese 581. I’m interested in whether a rogue planet might lose some of its geothermal activity once removed from th effects of stellar tides; if so they might be less appealing places to live. Here’s a paper by David Stevenson on the question of whether these rogue planets could sustain life; the answer is mabe, according to this. [http://www.gps.caltech.edu/uploads/File/People/djs/interstellar\_planets.pdf](http://www.gps.caltech.edu/uploads/File/People/djs/interstellar_planets.pdf) ---
**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:** [October 26, 2013, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938/49 "2013-10-26T18:49:06Z")
A planet would lose some of its geothermal activity by losing its tides, but for the Earth, that’s not going to be very significant: Most of the Earth’s geothermal heat comes from radioactive material in the core, not from tides. It’d be a different story if we were talking about Io (or, indeed, most moons). ---
**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:** [October 26, 2013, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938/50 "2013-10-26T21:21:49Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > From what I see on a quick search of Google, the escape velocity for the sun is 617 km/s. That’s 53 million km/day. You wouldn’t necessarily head out in a straight line, but if you did, that’d put you past Neptune’s orbit in about 90 days. That matches the diagram you’re describing from the show. That velocity would fall off during the climb out of the solar gravity well (asymptotically toward zero if the initial velocity is exactly equal to escape). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jupiter-shifts-orbit-earth-goes-rogue-what-happens/671938.md?page=2)