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The Wandering Earth short story in which the planet’s leaders agree to push Earth out of the solar system to escape

In Liu Cixin’s short story “The Wandering Earth” (first published in China’s Science Fiction World in July 2000), Cixin depicts a scenario in which the planet’s leaders agree to push Earth out of the solar system to escape. an impending solar eruption that should decimate all terrestrial planets. Of course, this story is based in the realm of fiction, but could Earth ever really leave the solar system?  However, as Ceriotti explained, “unlikely” doesn’t mean “impossible,” and he suggested a way it could theoretically be done. “Earth could be pulled out of its orbit by the impact of a massive interstellar object, fly through interstellar space and come into the solar system and pass close to Earth,” he said.

“In this close encounter, known as a ‘flyby,’ Earth and the object would exchange energy and momentum, and Earth’s orbit would be disrupted. If the object were fast, massive, and close enough, it could project Earth into an extrasolar escape orbit system.” Timothy Davis, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, agreed that Earth could theoretically be expelled from the solar system, and he has his own hypothesis about how that might happen.

“The planets, as they exist right now, are in stable orbits around the Sun. However, if the Sun had a close encounter with another star, then the gravitational interactions of these bodies could disrupt those orbits and potentially cause Earth to be ejected from the Solar System,” he said Davis Live Science in an email. However, Davis noted that while this scenario is feasible, it is incredibly doubtful that it will happen  at least in the foreseeable future. “Stellar encounters like that are pretty rare,” Davis said. “For example, we know that the star Gliese 710 is expected to come astronomically close to the Sun in about a million years – but even this flyby is unlikely to disturb the planets.”

While it’s unlikely that external forces will push Earth out of the solar system anytime soon, could humanity build machines capable of pushing a planet to the point where it ends up being ejected? “The energy required to remove Earth from its orbit and eject it from the solar system is so massive  equivalent to a sextillion (1 with 21 zeros behind it) megaton nuclear bomb going off at once  that it seems improbable,” Davis said. While such an event is far from likely, what would happen if Earth were to break away from the solar system? What would be the consequences if our home planet ended up permanently booted into the depths of space? “Earth would fly into interstellar space until it was captured or absorbed by another star or a black hole,” Ceriotti said, adding that if Earth were to leave the solar system, it would likely result in the decimation of a large portion if not all of planets. life. “It is unlikely that the atmosphere would remain: Earth’s global climate is very delicate due to the delicate balance of radiation coming from the Sun and energy dissipated into deep space. If this were to change, temperatures would change immediately and dramatically,” Ceriotti said.

Davis agreed that most life on Earth would not survive this cataclysmic displacement from the solar system. “If Earth were to leave the Solar System, it is very likely that the vast majority of life as we know it would disappear. Almost all of the energy used by living organisms on Earth comes from the Sun, either directly (e.g., plants that photosynthesize) , or indirectly (e.g. herbivores eat plants and carnivores eat herbivores). “In this scenario, the further the Earth moves away from the Sun, the lower its temperature would be. It would eventually freeze completely. The only natural source of heat left would be the decay of radioactive elements in the Earth’s crust left behind.” the formation of the solar system,” Davis said.

Davis explained that some life may persist but will eventually be doomed. “Some ‘extremophiles’ (animals/plants that can live in extreme environments) could feed on this energy, but complex life would likely disappear entirely. This radioactive heat would only allow Earth to maintain a temperature of around minus 230 degrees.” C [Celsius, or minus 382 degrees Fahrenheit]. At those temperatures, most of the atmosphere would also freeze, leaving Earth as a dead, icy world hurtling through the stars,” Davis said.

Looking into the distant future, Ceriotti added that our solar system will eventually be disrupted so severely that Earth will either be knocked out of it or destroyed entirely. “We predict that our galaxy is on a collision course with Andromeda [our nearest neighboring galaxy] in about 4.5 billion years. Such a massive collision of millions of stars is likely to cause major disruption to the solar system!” Ceriotti said. “Also, the Sun is predicted to expand and engulf the Earth in the next 5 billion years or so,” Ceriotti added.So even if Earth eventually leaves the Solar System one way or another, it’s not something we’ll have to worry about for another few billion years. Probably.

Read Now :The workshop was organized in collaboration with the Export Promotion Council for EOUs and SEZs

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