Okay listen up.
I hate to break it to you, but the Earth's orbit isn’t a circle, but an oval-shaped
ellipse.
And the length of the day is actually not 24 but 23.93 hours.
Precise enough for you?
Ha.
We, humans, take these facts for granted.
But what if one day, we had to move the entire planet to a completely new orbit and change
the existing order?
Before we figure out if there’s any way to push our planet out of its orbit, let's
find out WHY we might need to do so!
Here, I don't want to sugarcoat it: our doomsday is approaching.
Even if the planet doesn't get overheated due to global warming, the sun will finish
it off.
You see, the sun, which is literally the sponsor of life on Earth, is also our planet's biggest
enemy in a way.
The star is getting hotter and hotter as the centuries pass.
And one day, about 5 billion years from now, the sun will inevitably turn into a swollen
red giant.
Its bloated outer shell, consisting of gas, will keep swelling up until it reaches its
maximum size and brightness.
And then, about 2 billion years later, the sun will swallow the Earth.
Okay so it’s not happening tomorrow.
But people won't be around to see it.
Long before that, in about 1 billion years, the sun will have already grown more than
11% brighter.
It’ll make the average temperature on Earth rise to at least 120 degrees F. You might
think that such an increase won't be critical - like, come on, people are tougher than that!
No more snow and puffer coats?
We'll deal with it!
But, the situation would be much worse.
Even this increase in temperature will lead to the World Ocean getting dramatically warmer.
The water will start to evaporate like it does when you leave a pot of water in the
sun.
Animals and plants will have to adapt to the hothouse that used to be our friendly and
green planet.
Unfortunately, with time, the sun will only grow hotter, and soon, only random single-celled
organisms will roam the surface of the planet.
But not for long.
Once all the water turns into vapor, the ultraviolet light coming from the sun will break the water
molecules.
And the hydrogen, which is a crucial building material for all kinds of living cells, will
slowly but surely leak into space.
What I mean is that if our descendants want to stay alive, they’ll have to migrate to
another planet or maybe even galaxy!
But can you imagine what effort it would cost them to relocate the population of the whole
planet?
Keep in mind that in 100 years, the Earth's population will have already reached at least
11 billion people!
So, let's see: first, people of the future would have to build millions of space shuttles
and make billions of shuttle launches.
And it’d still take thousands of years to deliver all the Earth's inhabitants to their
new home.
Also, it’d take unimaginable amounts of fuel - even if people flew no further than
to another planet in the Solar System.
And then, how about all the "settling down" problems?
Imagine having to change the new planet so that it can satisfy human needs: all this
hassle with water, oxygen, and food!
Ugh!
That's why another option will likely come into play: people will have to change the
orbit of the planet before the disaster strikes to avoid the tragic outcome!
Theoretically, moving the Earth to a new orbit is possible.
But people must be very careful while doing it.
If something goes wrong, and the planet loses its orbit completely, it’s likely to go
astray and crash into the sun.
That's why new orbit calculations have to be super precise: an orbit too close to our
star - and we'll get burned, a bit too far - and we'll be frozen.
Scientists have even calculated that to keep leading a comfortable life (or at least survive),
people would have to change the orbit of the planet so that it's 9.5% further from the
sun than it is now.
In other words, Earth should be traveling at 102 million miles away from our star, instead
of the current 93 million miles.
Anyway, people of the future decide to try their luck and move the planet - which means
moving almost 6 sextillions (and that's 6 billion trillion) tons!
At first, a mega-strong and long lasso may seem to be the simplest solution.
Our descendants think that maybe they’ll be able to lay their hands on some stray asteroid,
and it’ll pull Earth into a different orbit.
But they come across several serious problems.
For one thing, where can you find a material strong enough to carry the weight of the whole
planet?
Besides, how can you be sure that this asteroid will take you exactly where you need to get?
(And as you remember, we need to move the planet not to just any, but to a very particular
orbit.)
And finally, such a sudden pull might cause chaos on the planet after its outer layer
moves and sets off a series of devastating tsunamis and earthquakes.
That's why, after considering the potentially catastrophic consequences of this method,
our descendants would decide to look for an alternative.
Maybe an effective way out would be moving the planet out of its orbit with the help
of a gigantic light sail?
Light is supposed to be reflected from the sun toward our planet and get caught by a
solar sail placed somewhere on Earth.
But once people calculate all the details, they'll find out that the reflective disk
of the light sail would have to be more than 19 times bigger than the diameter of the planet!
Otherwise, it would take more than 1 billion years for Earth to change its orbit.
So, most likely, our descendants would toss this plan too.
But then, someone will come up with the idea of electric thrusters.
The thing is that even nowadays, the Earth's orbit is already changed every time a rocket
launches from the planet.
When it takes off, it pushes the Earth in the opposite direction.
But of course, the effect is imperceptible.
But what if people launched billions of rockets at the same time?
Well, it’d be hard to accomplish since they’d need tons of different building materials
and fuel, more than our planet could provide!
But an electric thruster could become a cool alternative, especially if we talk about ion
drives!
People have been using such drives on spaceships since the 60s.
They work by shooting out charged particles, which makes the spacecraft move forward.
These ion engines need much less maintenance and are also way cheaper than the ones we’re
used to.
Also, they don't have turbines, propellers, or fuel pumps, so there are fewer things that
can break down!
But when ion drives were just invented, they didn't produce enough thrust to escape the
Earth's gravity.
And the weight of the batteries that could deal with this problem was just too great.
That's why spaceships couldn't rely solely on these engines.
But centuries from now, people are likely to either invent more powerful batteries or
use some breakthrough technologies to power the engines!
Should it come true, our descendants could point several massive electric thrusters in
the necessary direction and press the start button!
The thrusters would float above the Earth's atmosphere, somewhere around an altitude of
600 miles.
But they’d still be attached to the surface of the planet so that they could move it in
the right direction.
Unfortunately, people would have to turn up to 13% of the Earth's mass into ions to transport
the remaining bulk of the planet.
But come to think of it, this method could work out!
And if people managed this unprecedented feat and DID change the orbit of the planet as
planned, there’d be some noticeable changes.
For example, the sun would look a tiny bit smaller, and its influence on the Earth's
tides would be a bit weaker.
Our planet's orbital speed would drop down from 18.6 to 17.7 miles per second.
And perhaps most importantly, should the length of the day on our planet remain the same,
the year would become longer - not 365 but 418 days!
Bottom Line: your annual salary would stay the same, but with the longer year, you’d
get paid a lot less each week!
Well forget that…
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