What if Pluto blew up?
 

The reason im asking is because me and my man are in a dissagrement on what would happen if pluto blew up. he thinks that nothing would happen. I think that the whole milky way would be out of wack. anybody give a shit?

Good question, and one that is probably on the minds of everyone right now, especially with Saddam possibly having access to nuclear weapons. I don't think it would throw the other planets out of orbit. Everyone is orbiting the sun. Then again, I don't really know what would happen. Let us know if you find out.

Pluto is very small and insanely far away. I seriously doubt that Pluto exploding would have any noticeable effect on our solar system.

SpaceAce

i think it would make animals stare at the wall blankly and do other strange things.

now if jupiter blew ... :helpme

Isn't it interesting some of the arguments you get into as a couple?

Did your man ask you what would happen if uranus blew up?
:winkwink:

Well now, that's ironic .. I finally shut him up by sitting on his face (blush). Your comment does give me an idea to get back at him though :Graucho

Pluto Does have enough mass to knock the milkyway out but it would change the orbit of all planets in our solar system.

Pluto also only has an Atmosphere 6 months out of the year then it freezes and falls to the surface

Mickey would be very sad. :zzwhip

Consider this. Pluto was discovered far after the other planets. The reason? Because it's gravitational impact on the rest of the Solar System was so insignificant that we didn't ever consider that there might be another planet.

So, were that planet to disappear, the impact on the rest of the solar system would be nil. However, nothing just disappears. The explosion itelf may harm the solar system in some way, right? Very unlikely. The distance between Pluto and any other planet is always huge, and space is very big. The odds of any of the debris going very far is also nil. It would just end up as a tiny asteroid belt at best, not affecting the rest of the solar system.

As for the death of one planet affecting the entire Milky Way galaxy... :1orglaugh No. The explosion of our sun wouldn't be a blip for the galaxy. One planet is a joke.

No doubt such an event would have an impact overall in the universe, like all energy exchanges do, but I don't think it would be anything as cataclysmic as knocking the galaxy out of whack, Pluto is pretty small and weak like little puppy

I don't know what you smoke, but I want to meet your dealer now!

Seriously, you are kidding right?!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/3...uaoar2_300.gif

Pluto is smaller than our moon, if it blew up, it would create some nice meteors, and that's it. The milky way? You are talking about billions of stars light years away from each other.

It's like wondering if China would be out of wack if someone lit a match in the United States.

now if the moon dissapeared then the shit would hit the fan!

I think it would depend on *why* Pluto blew up.

If hit with a missle, NASA would be begging for that technology, we cant get satalites to go out that far.

If it was another reason, it might throw the whole scientific community into an uproar. Is there something in the planet that caused it to go boom? did something hit it? Did a chemical reaction take place to distroy the whole planet?

Mass and energywise, It wouldnt throw the whole milkyway out of wack. In fact, the Galaxy and universe has several supernova's (stars much larger than the sun that explode) and they dont affect the milky way in general, just their local area.

:1orglaugh that reminds me of a old cartoon. this coyote launches a goat onto the moon and the damn thing eats the moon.

:1orglaugh beat me to it.

I know this one! We wouldn't notice anything here on Earth.

I was a physics major and my senior project, basically, was on the the degree of chaos inherent in the solar system. Specifically, I chose Pluto as the body to watch and ran 200 million year long simulations of the solar system on a confined "6 body + Pluto" solar system. I gave a lecture at Yale on this subject. April 24, 1995.

Running simulations of the solar system with and without Pluto using Newton's gravitational equations
changes hardly anything from the Earth's point of view. It's small and very far away, so far away that the Sun looks only like a bright star from Pluto's distance out.

HaHaHaHaHa!

pluto isn't even a planet but rather an wandering astroid

yeah, its not even planet status worthy.

Whick begs another question... exactly what were you two smoking and how much did it cost? That's some really good shit to cause an argument about what would happen if a frozen little snowball suddenly blew up... to my knowledge, frozen snowballs don't have the habit of suddenly exploding.

To put it to scale, imagine the sun is the size of an 8 inch ball. Walk about 80 feet away and there is the earth, the size of a peppercorn. Walk another 1/2 mile and there is pluto, the size of 1/3 of a pinhead. Keep walking 4,000 miles and you will reach the nearest star outside of our solar system.

beat me to it....

:1orglaugh

That was my first thought since I am going to Disney next week

Earth might get hit with some meteors a few years after. Maybe a fairly large one even, hard to say.Ha ha.... yep.

didnt you guys ever watch startrek?

Pet peeve time.

The phrase "begs the question" doesn't mean what most people seem to think it means. Begging the question is a logical mistake in an argument.

It is when someone (inadvertantly) assumes a certain answer to a question, when trying to answer that question. For instance, in the debate about whether there is a god, it would be begging the question to say "Well, god says in the Bible that...." See?

You mean "Which leads to another question..." Unless I am really misunderstanding you.

i saw a show about this on TDC, pluto is an asteroid that got stuck in our solar system's grav loop.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

In my book, if it's big enough to become roughly spherical, its a planet.

I think Mickey Mouse would be pretty sad.

:1orglaugh great parallel. :thumbsup

Good point; a little of both. I know what it's supposed to mean, but the phrase is so commonly used improperly here in the states that it flows off my tongue in some situations where it's improperly used.

In this case, I read into the question an assumption that the GFY reader was as "stoned" as the poster to even consider such a question as a realistic or even possible cause/effect situation due to the scale illustration that I later explained.

I meant the stoned paragraph in my first reply as a joke, not to put down hunnyluv or the question at all. And yes Gothweb, I did stretch the phrase beyond it's proper use w/o explaining exactly what I was referring to. Good call :thumbsup

HAHA

The general magnetic pull of the solar system would be changed very little. It might have an effect of a few feet on things in the long run, but nothing to be concerned about in my uneducated opinion. :)
ZoiNk

ah who knows...it is so far away...but who knows what other tangible benefits pluto has given us...it acts a first line of defense whenever it is slightly off axis from us, it will attract anyting passin by towards it and away from us...but that is such a small window...it is negligible...as to how it lines up to afffect us...i think it is very very slight...but who knows:2 cents:

http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/vetext...est/Image2.jpg

:eek7

wasn't pluto de-classified as a planet since it's just a hunk of ice and space shit floating around? who gives a fuck about pluto its a ball of ice

I have no idea, but since there is nothing like the experimental method to find out how the Universe works, I suggest the following experiment:

http://www.dfeynman.com/misc/chili.jpg

KEEEEWL !!!

BEFORE and AFTER pics !!!! :thumbsup