What If Earth Was the Only Planet in the Solar System?

What If Earth Was the Only Planet in the Solar System? Imagine never being able to dream of landing on Mars or travelling to Saturn not because it’s impossible to get there but because they didn’t exist because the earth was the only planet in our solar system.

What would the night sky look like where ? would the earth be located and how would humans evolve?

Other eight planets in our solar system aren’t just pretty to look at or something that we strive to travel to one day even though they’re billions of kilometres away, they’ve played an essential role in life here on earth. so what would happen if they never existed?

Each planet in the solar system played a vital role in the development of earth billions of years ago and they continued playing a vital role in keeping earth safe today. For example, take the placement of every single planet they all have their own little space in the galaxy and that’s not by accident our planet’s work together to keep each other in place.

If Mercury and Venus cease to exist, the earth might drift closer to the Sun. Same way if Jupiter or Saturn disappeared instead of getting closer to the Sun, the earth might drift further away from it this would cause a number of issues for us earthlings.

Right now we’re lucky enough to live in what scientists call the Goldilocks zone. They call it that because Earth sits in the range of orbits around the Sun that are just right to sustain life. If the earth were to move closer to the Sun it will get a little bit hot we might burn to a crisp. The farther away we get the more the temperature would drop earth would be too cold to sustain life.

The position of Earth in our solar system not only affects life but everything that happens on our planet, it affects our seasons, the length of our days and how long our year is but unfortunately the time we wake up will be the least of our worries with earth being the only planet in our solar system.

There’s no telling where it might end up. We could be all the way in the back where Uranus and Neptune used to be or somewhere right up front where mercury once was. It’s safe to say that no matter where we end up if it’s not the Goldilocks zone there’s a pretty good chance there wouldn’t be any life here on earth. If life did form somehow, it would definitely be aquatic that’s because without any other planets keeping us in check, Earth’s gravity would be severely different.

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But what if instead of the planets never existing in the first place. One day they suddenly disappeared well apart from Earth violently moving around not knowing where to go. We’d also have another huge issue to worry about asteroids. If just one planet suddenly disappeared a number of issues would go along with it.

There are two planets that have a very special role in keeping Earth safe Jupiter and that’s because while the earth is hanging out thriving with life Jupiter and Saturn are getting beat up by millions of asteroids flying through our solar system. There are hundreds of millions of asteroids that are trying to kill the earth.

Luckily we hardly see any of these and that thanks to Jupiter and Saturn because of their enormous size and gravity. They do an excellent job of pulling asteroids into them so that they never make it to earth.

With these planets, gone earth would be bombarded by asteroids. This is not good in case you’ve forgotten a single asteroid hit Earth millions of years ago wiping out the entire dinosaur population so this would end up being pretty bad. Earth would soon be covered with massive craters and once again life would cease to exist.

Luckily you won’t have to worry about any of this as you can rest easy knowing that earth sits comfortably in this perfect little spot in the universe where we can all live and thrive. Another thing you don’t need to worry about is what would happen if the earth lost oxygen for five seconds but it is fun to think about it anyway so we’ll leave that story for another what-if.

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