Moving the Earth Out Of the Way of That Big Bad Sun

I have always wanted to fly around in a spaceship seeing lots of lovely stars and planets and other curious beautiful things that exist out there. To stop getting too frustrated, I have looked on the Earth as a sort of spaceship travelling around giving everyone an eye on the universe. This is okay until you want to land on another planet, and then you would need some rather large landing legs not to mention some way of stopping the Earth from rolling around all over the place.

Earth colliding with another planet

Things aren’t going to happen like that. The main problem there is probably is that a landing will be a bit more like a collision and the Earth and the other planet will just break up into little bits and fly off all over the place. I have seen this sort of thing proposed in science fiction books and even in NASA. A recent book that I am listening to called Earthsearch has our heroes arriving in the solar system and discovering that the Earth has mysteriously moved. Unfortunately that is as far as I have got with the audio book and I wouldn’t like to spoil the story for anybody that wants to listen to it or read it.

The Earth is big I will give you that but so is the universe. So what’s wrong with a few big ideas? Our sun is not going to be around forever. The Sun is slowly getting warmer as it burns the hydrogen in its core. In about 5 billion years, the Sun will begin evolving into a bloated red giant. Its outer gas shell will swell up, engulfing the Earth by the time it reaches its peak size and brightness 7 billion years from now. It’s probably not a good idea to be around improving your tan.

5 billion years does seem like a long time away, but unfortunately something is going to happen a lot sooner. In just over one billion years, the Sun will grow around 11% brighter, raising average Earth temperatures to around 50 °C (120 °F). That will warm the oceans so much they evaporate without boiling.

Earth heating up and bursting into flames

So why not jump into spaceships and travel somewhere else? The Earth at the moment has about 6.7 billion people, which would take a lot of spaceships. It would also take a long time. Then once you arrive at planet X you may need to terraform and then build up the civilisation once again.

Obviously, that is the worst case. Who knows what we might be like in 1 billion years time and we may already have colonised planets and built lots of burger joints. If we haven’t moved around and colonised planets, it may be the case we would prefer to take our oxygen, water and food with us (and burger places of course) by moving the Earth.

So how would the Earth be moved? Is it actually possible? Every time a rocket is launched on the Earth it produces movement of the earth. Newton discovered this fact that every force has an equal and opposite force. This means that if a rocket goes up then the Earth will go down, very simply. This is the way aircraft and spacecraft work for instance. The movement of the earth is so small that it isn’t worth worrying about. (I would like to state that NASA and Newton have not got a conspiracy theory and are not moving the earth towards the sun).

Of course, a small force for a long time, has a big effect. Spacecraft (space tugs)  have been suggested for moving asteroids that are on a trajectory for an Earth impact. It could be used to move an asteroid from the outer part of the solar system and change its orbit so that it passes close to the Earth and transfers energy pulling the Earth out of its orbit very slowly. Another way of doing this would be to use mass drivers that dig into the ice or rock and throw it out backwards so that the asteroid goes forwards. Jets of ice could be ejected from the asteroid or comet to fine tune the orbit in the inner solar system. It is necessary to keep a good eye on the asteroid or comet’s orbit to prevent a major disaster.

Asteroid flying by Earth

It has been estimated that it would take a million passes, give or take a few. It would take about one close pass every 1000 years to reach the orbit of Mars in a billion years. This is a big job, and something that needs to be monitored to keep the asteroid or comet on the correct trajectory

Another idea is a free-floating solar sail at a point near the Earth where the pressure of solar radiation balances the Earth’s gravitational pull.  The reflection of sunlight from the sail will pull the Earth outwards along with the sail, increasing the Earth’s orbital energy and accelerating the centre of mass of the system outwards, away from the Sun. It has been calculated that to keep pace with the Sun’s warming would require a disc-shaped sail 19.2 times the Earth’s diameter. It would have to be tilted at an angle of 35° to the line towards the Sun, and stationed at about five times the Moon’s distance from the Earth, a piece of cake. The technology to build this solar cell is totally beyond us at the moment.

Moving the Earth has problems. Everything pulls on everything else in the universe. Moving the Earth would pull on the planets, and it could totally destabilise the solar system causing a few headaches to say the least. One billion years is also a very long time, and in that time. We may have developed technology that is far beyond what we even dream about today so it is probably better to wait for future generations to sort out the problem and teleport the Earth to the other side of the universe.

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