yeah all right let's shake things up a bit our solar system has been around for billions of years and is starting to get a little boring so what if we shook up the positions of our planets what if Jupiter was right next to the Sun or what if Earth switched places with Mars today we're rearranging the planets in our solar system from largest to smallest and then flipping them back to go smallest to largest but how would this affect Earth and would we have a new planet to call home this is what if and here's
what would happen if the planets changed positions okay first let's take a look at what would happen if the planets were laid out from largest to smallest starting with the sun H well this configuration has a big problem but before we tell you what that is let's look at how the individual planets would line up Jupiter is the granddaddy of the solar system it's more than twice as massive as all the other planets put together it would move from its current position all the way to Mercury's spot placing at less than one tenth of its
original distance from the Sun think that's a crazy idea well astronomers studying exoplanets tell us that this is not so unus usual other large gaseous planets orbiting very close to their stars have actually been named Hot Jupiters now sitting in Mercury's orbit Jupiter's orbit around the Sun a trip that normally takes 12 years would now take just 90 days and the average temperature would rise to around 167° C making Jupiter's gaseous atmosphere heat and swell and what what happened to Jupiter's moons well the icy layers of the Moon ganim Kalisto and Europa might start to
sublimate forming water vapor revealing the oceans beneath but that wouldn't last long given the intense heat of the Sun the water would evaporate now if there's any life in europa's Ocean it might welcome the warm thaw only to quickly realize things are a bit too hot to handle okay in second position behind Jupiter would be the gas giant Saturn taking the place of Venus things would be warming up here too the average temperature of Saturn would climb from -40° C to 55° C and in its new position Saturn would look a lot different now bombarded
by the intense heat and radiation from the Sun the planet's rings would dis disappear the rocks found in the Rings might survive but the ice particles would melt and the dust would get blown away by solar winds but who knows the magnetic fields of Saturn and the sun might interact and form brand new patterns okay now we get to the best seat in the house the Goldilocks zone yeah unfortunately Earth no longer gets this spot we'll check in on our new home in the solar system in a bit but for now the habitable zone is
occupied by our third largest planet Uranus now normally it takes Uranus 84 years to revolve around the Sun but here that shrinks to just a single Earth year and instead of it being a cold Barren Planet it would now be basking in the sun's Rays so would this transform the ice giant into a habitable planet well for habitability you need three things liquid water carbon-based molecules and an energy source and well with more heat from the Sun Water Ice in Uranus's atmosphere could become liquid water so we can check that off the list now what
about carbon-based molecules well luckily they exist in Uranus's icy atmosphere of methane and ammonia check and in its new spot closer to the Sun there'd be way more energy available so so yeah it looks like we got everything we need but not so fast remember Uranus has super high atmospheric pressure and also lacks a surface so the chances of this ice giant becoming Earth 2.0 are pretty slim maybe Uranus's moons would be a better spot to live or maybe things would improve for Uranus in a couple billion years yeah after all Earth wasn't the most
habitable planet at the start of its life either yeah but there's no time for that we've got more planets to check out all right in the number four spot we've got Neptune filling in for where Mars would normally be moving this ice giant so much closer to the Sun would start warming it up considerably from its current -20° C it would also go from having an orbit of 165 Earth years to being able to zip around the Sun in just under two but Neptune is known for having violent storms and due to the increased heat
and energy it would get from being this close to the Sun its storms might get even worse okay A bit you're wondering about that big problem I was talking about earlier well this new planet order would be seriously destabilizing we've got four Big Planets now crammed into orbits that are very close as these large planets swing around the Sun they'd exert huge gravitational pull on each other this could tear the system out of whack destroying our entire solar system and even if that doesn't happen something terrifying would happened to us in this newly redecorated solar
system in this new order Earth would be the fifth planet from the sun sandwiched between Neptune and Venus now if Earth were to orbit too close to Neptune we could become the planet's 15th Moon oops but really that might be our best case scenario being so much further away from the Sun we'd now be getting less energy our surface water would freeze all life on the planet would die out including you the only things that might stand a chance are a few creatures living inside deep sea hydrothermal vents being heated by the Earth's core anyone
want to be a snailfish okay after Earth would come Venus then Mars then Mercury this far away from the Sun temperatures would plummet on all three planets Venus's sulfuric clouds would condense forming acid rain sulfuric acid ice and carbon dioxide ice not the kind of ice you want in your whiskey Mars and Mercury with little to no atmosphere years would become cold ice boxes orbiting the Sun yeah none of this sounds great I think I like the current order of the planets that we have now but what if we tried this in Reverse what if
we arranged the planets in ascending order with the smallest one closest to our sun in this case hot little mercury would be in position number one yeah just like today so so far so good in orbit number two we'd find Mars Mars would get toasty reaching an average temperature of 32° C like a hot day here on Earth but any surface water might get vaporized and carbon dioxide in the ice caps and in the soil would get released would this lead to a thicker atmosphere well probably not as the atmosphere would likely get Stripped Away
by strong solar winds so unfortunately the red planet won't become any more habitable with this new positioning okay now we reach our happy place the habitable zone would pulling Venus into the goldilock Zone create ideal conditions for Life yeah sorry folks it doesn't look good sure Venus would cool off a bit but not enough to sustain liquid water which is essential for habitability Venus's carbon dioxid atmosphere makes things hot through an intense greenhouse effect there's no water on Venus's surface and very little water vapor in the atmosphere even if a comet crashed and delivered water
here it would evaporate in the heat so big thumbs down for new life and how about Earth Well we'd be in fourth place this would mean we'd get just half as much sunlight as we get today that's not so bad right well unfortunately this means we'd freeze similar to our other scenario maybe some small pockets of Life Could survive but humans wouldn't stand a chance without being in that perfect habitable zone Earth just wouldn't be the same in fifth place is Neptune which is closer to the Sun compared to where it is now now Neptune's
gravitational field might ward off some asteroids headed toward Earth it would also make for a beautiful night sky with Neptune shining brightly second only to our moon further down the line Saturn and Uranus would swap places with Uranus coming in and Saturn moving out probably wouldn't change things all that much Jupiter moves from fifth place to eighth place six times farther away from the Sun than before that's a big change one year on Jupiter would now last nearly 14 times as long as before from 12 Earth years to 165 it's hydrogen and hel iium atmosphere
would stay pretty much the same but the weirdest thing that might happen being this far out Jupiter's gravity would have an effect on meteors asteroids and other rocks flying around the outer solar system and due to its significant gravitational pull Jupiter would attract them and begin to fling them around the inner solar system it would be like the late heavy bombardment experienced by the early solar system planets would get hit with significantly more asteroids than they do in our current formation G you know I'm glad the planets aren't laid out from the Sun based on
size big to small or small to big either way things wouldn't be good for Earth we'd freeze and die life would cease to exist now how did we get to the current order of our solar system anyway 4.6 billion years ago our solar system started off as a Big Blob of gas some of this collapsed due to gravity and formed the Sun and other bits came together to form the planets there was still a lot of gas and dust around which concentrated into a dense rotating disc the rotation of this disc affected the positions of
our planets the smaller rocky planets Mercury Venus Earth and Mars were pulled inward toward the Sun and further away from the Sun gas and Ice condensed to form Jupiter Saturn Neptune and Uranus a second transformational phase began 3.8 billion years ago the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn became locked together briefly creating instability in the solar system to counter that instability their positions changed Jupiter migrated Inward and Saturn Uranus and Neptune migrated outward after a few million years things settled down with all four assuming positions similar to where they are today regardless of how it all
happened and why the planets sit where they do today I'm just happy the earth ended up in the goldilock zone and based on this hypothetical well it doesn't look like any of the other planets would do as good a job housing humans even if they were in the right spot let's just hope Earth stays right where it is for a long long time now what if the Earth was suddenly hit by a massive volcano that could destroy it well then staying in the goldilock zone might be the least of our worries but that sounds like
a story for another what if
