I’d need a new pickup line.
I think we’d be talking about the transfer of angular momentum into linear momentum. I’m not sure if interconversion is possible without feeling inertial effects or not. Especially since we’re not undergoing acceleration. I don’t know what this would mean for planetary motion, and conservation of momentum in a solar system consisting of thousands of orbiting bodies. Interesting thought.
There’s is a benefit, actually, in that any nearby stars that will on day go supernova, won’t be bathing our planet with intense gamma rays.
To put that into perspective the earth orbits the sun at 100,000 km/h (27.8 km sec), so the 220 km/sec from the sun orbiting the galaxy suddenly changing to linear motion is pretty significant in comparison.
surely thats got to change earths orbit significantly before the earth / sun fell into a new equilibrium?
Would the motion become completely linear though? I was under the impression most of the mass was dark matter. Are we erasing dark matter as well as the stars?
It means someone finally wrote out all nine billion names.
It seems to me that if the constellation was just the one star, it would always be right.
I’m not the OP but lets say all matter outside our solar system as I think thats a more interesting question. In the case of most of the mass of the galaxy remaining, it’s already been answered, apart from satellites that use stars to navigate and some migrating species of birds we wouldn’t be much effected would we?
So if the entire mass of the galaxy instantaneously disappeared, would the sudden loss of the mass of the gravity and the sudden angular to linear momentum change of 220 km/sec completely change the earths orbit?
Agreed. No doubt THAT is the one alignment the dread lord waits for. :smack:
I have a program doing that as we spea
No, no, we’re looking for things that would CHANGE.
Actually, in 8.6 years, we’d know there was a Sirius problem.
Psssst. Second sentence. Hypothetical Fairy, magic wand.
Hollywood blockbusters would have to feature unknown actors.
If all dark matter left too; I do think all the orbits in the solar system would change, albeit very slowly. After all, all the matter within the solar system is currently under almost exactly the same gravitational influences as the sun. So it stands to reason that we’d all speed up, slow down, and/or change direction at the same time, speed, and relative positions.
In the long run though, the oval orbits would be slowly evolving toward perfectly round, wouldn’t they? That might move a few asteroids into our path.
Would the vacuum of space begin pulling more strongly to spread us out? Are the gravitational forces around us protecting us from the great suck?
Both dark matter and “bright” matter are small in mass-energy compared to dark energy, so while the actual shape of the universe might change if it all went away except for the solar system., it wouldn’t change as much as one might think.
Ooh! Ooh! but wait. . . There would be nothing between us and any supernova, light, energetic rays of any sort anywhere, whose radiation had been released up to that point.
Would all the rays moving toward us fry us to smithereens in ten years or so? Might they ignite Jupiter and Neptune?
The entire Solar System would react as a unit since without other referential frames, our local space would become effectively isolated from all others (since the others are empty space).
This only applies if we extend the OP to mean “what if everything outside of the Solar System instantaneously ceased to exist.”
In contract, if only the stars were to disappear, then one would assume that the vast bulk of matter/energy not contained in the stars would remain in place. By this combined gravitationally dampening effect, the result of the removal of the stars should be greatly ameliorated.
But the night sky is already mostly dark. If there were enough radiation out there to fry us but for the intervening dust and black objects, those objects themselves would become so hot that they themselves would radiate. So we’re forced to conclude that there just isn’t enough radiation out there to do us harm. Which isn’t to say that a rogue x-ray burst wouldn’t do us harm, but it can do us harm anyway. After all, we can visibly see the majority of outer space, so there no reason we can’t “see” it in the x-ray spectrum as well.
If they’re not rotating, then only the non-visible side would be hot and radiating away from us. If they are rotating, then they are absorbing that energy across their entire surface area, thus dispersing the amount that would show to us.
Everything that would normally be reflected elsewhere would continue on toward us. While we’re not talking about the whole being focused toward Earth by a lense, we’re completely eliminating all shielding we currently depend upon. We have no way of knowing how much radiation that represents I suppose. 