• Question: What would happen if the earth exploded and where would humanity live?

    Asked by Viv to Stefan, Anna on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Stefan Lines

      Stefan Lines answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      First of all, I really hope this doesn’t happen! It is possible that some event (such as a passing star in our galaxy) could destabilize our solar system and cause planets to smash into either other, and cause the Earth to explode… But I think it’s more likely that our planet will burn and be swallowed up by our Sun in 5 Billion years time when the Sun runs out of fuel and becomes a massive ‘Red Giant’!

      Either way, we would definitely need to think about moving. If we can terraform Mars (like we are thinking about doing soon with the Mars One mission), then I suppose Mars would be a good option!

    • Photo: Anna Scaife

      Anna Scaife answered on 15 Nov 2014:

      Hey Viv – like Stefan says, when the Sun expands to become a red giant in 5 billion years we probably want to move on… but before then (in about 1 billion years) it’s probably already going to be too hot for human beings to live on the Earth.

      One cool solution to this that’s been proposed is too make a device to harness a giant comet as it passes close to the Earth and to use the comet’s momentum to pull the Earth out into a larger orbit further away from the Sun where it’s cooler!

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