If Neptune disappeared, the entire Solar System would collapse beyond repair.

It would be enough for Neptune’s orbit to change by 0.1% for the planets of the Solar System to collide with each other, according to a digital simulation.

All the planets in the Solar system They fulfill a gravitational function. Just because everyone has obeyed the same arrangement for billions of yearsis that today we have the cosmic balance around the Sun. In this sense, nor is there a celestial body ‘superior’ to another in our cosmic neighborhood. Neptune, however, might be the exception.

Neptune is the only planet that is not visible to the naked eye. According to NASAthe eighth planet of the Solar System is a place «dark, cold and buffeted by supersonic winds«. It is one of the ice giants that cohabits this star system with Earth, with a 30 times greater distance from the Sun than our own planet.

Before the question of what would happen if neptune disappeared, a team of scientists performed a computer simulation. The results of the ice giant disappearing they didn’t like them at all.

We suggest: The mystery of planet 9: the ‘ghost’ celestial body that scientists have failed to decipher

Planets spinning everywhere

NASA / Wikimedia Commons

The only scenario in which scientists thought Neptune might vanish is if a neighboring star passed too close of our Solar System. And what’s more, it wouldn’t even ‘disappear’: to start cosmic chaos, it would only be enough for its orbit to move 0.1%explain the authors of the study.

If so, being the farthest planet, it would possibly be seen attracted by the gravitational force of this new passing star. When this situation arises, explain Leah Crane para New Scientistthe other planets would begin to rotate everywhere:

“A neighboring star that gets too close to our solar system might throw it into chaos. Simulations suggest that a passing star would only need to nudge Neptune’s position three times the distance between Earth and the sun to make the planets go haywire.”

According to the researchers, this minimal movement would destabilize the balance that the Solar System has cultivated for billions of years, since its creation. In this apocalyptic scenario, “the other planets will collide with each other,” explain the authors of the study. It would also be possible thatwere expelled from the Solar System entirely«.

Keep reading:

All the planets of the Solar System will align this summer and so you can see them

This is the Oort cloud, the cosmic ‘shell’ that surrounds our Solar System