Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes some crazy ideas for how to tinker with the universe and tests their effects against the laws of physics, from snapping the moon in half to causing doomsday events with gravitational waves. apple, Spotify Or check out our podcast page.
By the end of the 16th century, pretty much everyone knew that the Earth revolved around the Sun, not the other way around. This was a huge blow to those who thought the Earth was the center of the universe, but the Dead Planets Society is here to ease their disappointment. Yes, we’re trying to revive geocentrism.
Putting Earth at the center of the solar system requires more than just fudging the math: The Sun is much more massive than our puny planet, so forcing it to orbit the Sun would be nearly impossible, so hosts Chelsea White and Leah Crane would have to make some major changes to the solar system as we know it.
In this episode, Andy Rivkin Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland say the only way to make Earth an Earth-centered solar system would be to make it the most massive thing around – which would have some strange effects, assuming it doesn’t collapse the planet into a black hole.
First, the Moon would have to speed up to maintain its orbit, orbiting the Earth in an hour or so before it would break apart. If the remaining planets didn’t speed up too, they would all crash into the new giant Earth within a decade or two. The Earth’s extra mass could also disrupt other nearby stars, causing them to start attracting it to Earth. A victorious Earth-centered solar system might not last long, but it would certainly come to a dramatic end.
topic:
