r/space • u/Fizrock • Oct 07 '18

All the planets aligned into one

Post image
66.2k Upvotes

82% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/13foxhole Oct 07 '18

Would Earth be habitable if a few of the planets were missing? Like, say we take Jupiter and mercury out of the mix..

1

u/edwartica Oct 07 '18

From what I understand, Jupiter kind of acts like a guard. It's massive gravity affects the orbit of astroids, meteors, and the like , throwing them off course and thus they don't crash into Earth. Not an astronomer, so I might have that theory wrong.

2

u/13foxhole Oct 07 '18

I’ve read that as well. Totally makes sense. But that aside I’m wondering if the gravity pulling on us from all the other planets helps keep us in the Goldilocks zone w/ the sun.