Welcome to the Solar System
construction zone.
Today, you’ll be using our cosmic sandbox
to build a brand new planet.
During the formation of our Solar System,
billions of years ago,
a giant disc of gas and dust
circled our young star.
Hydrogen, helium and many other
elements swirled.
Eventually, gravity lumped
these particles together
to form planetesimals.
This was the first step
on their journey to becoming planets.
Eventually, they grew into protoplanets,
rocky planets composed of elements with high melting points
developed in the hot inner Solar System.
And in the outer Solar System,
icy gas giants formed.
This process occurred over many millions of years.
So what would happen
if you fast-tracked this planetary construction?
Would you be setting up our own planet for destruction?
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Enjoy this out of this world experience without leaving your home.
And take notes.
You're about to build your own world, so what is it going to look like?
To get started on the construction project of a lifetime,
you’d need certain raw materials.
To build a rocky planet like our own,
you’d need four key elements
that account for 90% of the Earth’s crust.
Oxygen would be crucial
as it’s the most abundant element on our planet.
It makes up 47% of the mass of the crust
and 21% of the atmosphere.
The second necessary element would be silicon.
This accounts for another 28% of the Earth’s crust.
The other two essential elements would be aluminum and iron.
Yeah, with just those four,
you could build your rock in space.
But if you wanted to spice things up,
you could add smaller traces of other elements
that make up the crust.
Like calcium, sodium and magnesium.
But now, the hard part would begin.
Since the developing days of our Solar System
are long in the past,
you’d need an alternative to gas and dust
swirling around a protostar.
You'd need to follow a more manual plan.
In the end, this would be a blessing.
If we had a new star developing in our Solar System,
it would cause serious gravitational disturbances.
Not to mention that temperatures
as high as 1,700 °C (3,100 °F) would scorch everything.
So, where would you get all the materials?
Well, you could start by
mining the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter.
But this would be a very small start.
Here you’d accumulate only 4% of the mass of the Moon.
If you ventured way out beyond Pluto,
you’d be able to accumulate significantly more material
in the Oort Cloud.
You’d now have a mass of material equal to about
five Earths from the icy, comet-like objects out there.
The next step would be to pick the location
for your shiny new planet.
If you want it to have conditions for life,
it would be necessary to place it within the habitable zone.
This means the planet would need to orbit our Sun
at a distance of 0.9 to 1.2 AU.
So it would be in our planetary neck of the woods.
Somewhere between Venus and us or us and Mars.
This proximity would have some significant repercussions on Earth.
While our planet is primarily impacted by the gravitational pull of the Sun
compared to the pull of other planets,
this new world would cause some disruptions.
It could shift our orbit
and even cause tsunamis or devastating earthquakes.
So it would be wise to make a planet smaller than Earth.
But just how small it would need to be
to avoid catastrophe would still be a gamble.
OK, finally, it’s time to get building.
And in this case, that would require manually slamming
all your collected objects into each other until they fuse.
Sounds easy, right?
Not so fast.
The other major challenge for you would be time.
Planets take at least 10 million years to form naturally.
Plus, you’d have to wait for delivery of all that material
from the Oort Cloud.
Based on the expected 300 years it will take NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft
to reach this place,
you could expect a roundtrip delivery window of
at least 600 years.
So much for an easy job.
Maybe it would be better not to disrupt billions of years
of the delicate balance of our Solar System.
Who knows what kind of planetary disruptions
a new planet would come with.
I mean, you’d hate to see Jupiter and Saturn suddenly collide.
Or would you?
Well, that’s a story
for another WHAT IF.