What If Earth Orbited Jupiter?
Space

What if our Earth Orbited Jupiter?

Jupiter’s moons are known to be the four left of a larger set of moons. With the formation of Jupiter’s ancient moons, the proto-planetary disk surrounding the sun was still comparatively dense. This causes the moons to be deprived of velocity and coil into Jupiter. The four left behind were way too far away that they continued to sustain the orbit until the sun drove off most of the free dust. So if our Earth-sized moons build far enough off, then they could have created. It is suspected that a larger planet than Jupiter would be required to create moons of that size. What if our Earth was orbiting Jupiter just like its moons? In this article we will explore that possibility.

Saturn’s inner moons evidently encountered a disastrous crash at the time of the dinosaurs which destroyed them. The remains of it further transformed into Saturn’s larger inner moons. Fundamentally, all of them except  for Titan and Iapetus. No wonder, that is a very terrifying situation and no one would want that to be happening on your moons unless you want four to demolish and improve for good while life is evolving on the outermost moon. The inhabitants of which could populate the inner moons. There is no fine simplification as to why these inner moons ran into each other and collided on the first place.

Hill Spheres

The Hill sphere is the area of space where a planet or moon can hold on to a satellite. Earth’s is nearly 1.5 million km, while the moon is about 384,000 km away. So more close the Jupiter, smaller the hill sphere gets. An Earth-like planet in orbit of Jupiter at the orbital distance and eccentricity of the four large moons, that is, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto would have a Hill sphere of about 42, 36, 87, and 152, 000 km. Therefore, this is evident that it is remarkably smaller than the distance to our own moon. Although it is larger than the distance to Deimos, that is, the farther of Mars’ two moons this is at a distance of about 23,000 km. So, theoretically you could have Moon’s moons, but they would be smaller than our moon, and also it will be closer in too.

The out large moon of Jupiter or Saturn within limits is Iapetus, located at about 3.6 million km. If Earth was at this far a distance from Jupiter, its Hill radius would be counted to approx 352,000 km. If it were spiralling around Saturn then it would be about 526,000 km. This is the only arrangement that could possibly support a moon at Earth distance.

Thus, this covers Hill spheres. There is a huge amount of other orbital dynamics too which could possibly have a tendency to cause trouble for the secondary moons building around primary moons.

Radiation

Jupiter’s satellites get a wide and strong range of radiations. The satellites of Saturn on the other hand are deprived of the same. Jupiter has a strong magnetic field and that serves as a greater reason for the cause of the radiation. Our gas giant will, therefore, require a vulnerable field such as Saturn. On the flip side, the resident’s of the planets require to be protected from the sources of cosmic radiation. Hence, every single planet will require its own magnetic field. If not, then one the planets of which life developed could have magnetic fields and all the while the rest are populated. There is a possibility for the rest to even have structures built underground to defend them from cosmic radiation.

There is a huge amount of physics mixed up in the search of the possibilities involved with a habitable moon. As advocated by our researchers and scientists, if it’s the Jupiter that Earth orbited in the current orbit, it would eventually finish up as a preserved dead ball filled with dirt.

If Jupiter orbited the Sun at or near where Earth is now, that is a different story. Jupiter would be swollen bigger, and may even glow from the Sun’s radiation, and tidal heating. It would remain a gas giant. Keeping both the situations under check, it would initiate the same. If Earth orbited within the dust rings, similar to what the moons that existed there did, then they would be ripped apart by the forces of tides. Further, it would have turned into a huge ring that would have gradually been immersed by the gas giant. And this is exactly what the Saturn is experiencing now. And one day those rings would be gone.

Jupiter’s main ring ceases at around 129,000 km radius, or a little less than twice the planets radius. It is believed that an Earth sized body would be pulled apart all the way to the outer edge of the Thebe gossamer ring at about 226,000 km. radius.

The action of pulling apart the planet would not look like an explosion; instead the tidal forces would warm the planet up until it was turned into a molten glowing ball. Initially, Jupiter would peel off its atmosphere. However, the liquid planet would then make its own very light atmosphere, and that as well would be pulled into Jupiter. It would look similar to a thin vapor stream from the Earth to Jupiter which will look like it is leading the Earth as if Jupiter was lashing the Earth around.

Simultaneously, the tidal forces of the Earth would give rise to tides on the surface of Jupiter which just like our own moon would makes the Earth to gradually circle away from Jupiter. So Earth would contract, and would have kept on circling away until it became a miniature size to become solid. Further, it would continue to circle out until its tidal was locked, and then still circle away but at a much decreased rate. It would finish up being about the size of Io, and the density of Io, along with the same orbit. This information in itself provides evidence to the fact that Io at one time could have been much bigger in size.

The Orbit of Io would be the smallest orbit that would lead to a unscathed Earth. It is assumed that the ancient Earth would have had a orbital period of nearly 45 hours, and a day that could have lasted 12 hours long. At that orbit, the atmosphere would remain all powerful and intact. Jupiter, on the other side, would peel off excess keeping it at around 1/10th in comparison to what ours is today.  However, that atmosphere would be poisonous from the volcanic activity that would cover the moon.

From where Jupiter is today, the surface temperature of the moon would average to about -50 degrees Celsius. If Jupiter would have been where Earth is today, the temperature would average to about -10 degrees Celsius including the tidal locking and the high carbon-dioxide content. An eclipse would emerge every 45 hours lasting to about less than an hour.

Tidal heating would bring about a huge core greater than the one we have now. The magnetosphere formed would be parallel to that of Jupiter. And it will act to improve Jupiter’s problematic magnetosphere. It will be just as same to what Io does now. And the only difference would be the fact that it will be much stronger.

No moons could really be able to stay in orbit close to Earth. They would all be wiped out of orbit by Earth, or could strike with them. At this point, Earth would begin to set in for the long distance. Volcanism will keep the atmospheric conditions toxic to life. That long distance would involve the gradual relapse to a higher orbit, and the decelerating of Earth’s rotation. This would entirely finish when Earth would become tidally locked to Jupiter. Meanwhile, any moon in Earth’s path would have been caste off. When such a situation occurs where Earth becomes tidally locked, then the orbital period of the moon could be anywhere from the duration of10 days to 80 days on the basis of the orbital parameters. At that point the circling out will progressively go on. However, it will continue only at a much decelerated rate. The core of Earth will cool, and its magnetosphere will contract or it will vanish all together. This is a good thing as the Jupiter has a huge magnetosphere, and the size of Earth preserves it. The Earth is far enough away from Jupiter that the atmosphere can expand, and still close enough that Jupiter will peel away any excess.

The day is usually seen to be long. The day is hot, whereas the night is relatively cold. Convection of the atmosphere keeps the atmosphere moving to help reduce some of the extremes, but not fully. Even with a day as long as 80 days, there is so much that can be still done. On the flip side, there would still be seasons based upon our angular rotation around Jupiter. If it was near Jupiter’s orbital plane such as the moon is to Earth, then seasons would be showing slight change, but any angle above 10 degrees would be felt between the tropics and arctic.

Conclusion

As the atmosphere keep on getting dense, the same methane breathing microbes will be formed such as the microbes chlorophyll based, the bacteria and the first single celled organisms. Off it goes from there until some monkey, dolphin, or dinosaur grows a big enough brain to understand that. Thus, having Earth orbit Jupiter in Earth’s orbit would likely not affect the possibility of life.

References

Interested in learning more about Jupiter? Why not read 10 Mind-Blowing Facts About the Solar System’s Biggest Planet.

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