Ceres, the photo voltaic system's largest asteroid, has less than 1/40,000th the mass of Earth; the Moon, a mere 1/80th. These objects are the heaviest you're probably to find - there are heavier moons and complete planets you would think about using, however to be sincere from this point of view it looks more like utilizing a succession of tons of, hundreds or tens of hundreds of smaller asteroid impacts would be a better bet. That's a trillion times heavier than all of humanity. Altogether that is a mass of one billion tonnes of humanity jumping ten metres in the air. Jumping up and down to try to move the Earth is like mounting a fan on a sailboat, pointing the fan on the sail, and expecting the boat to maneuver forwards. Note that the Earth does not and won't behave like a stable, inflexible billiard ball under such large impacts as these. Basically, the point right here is that modelling impacts like these is a difficult enterprise. It entails asteroids, like the above methodology, solely instead of direct impacts, this time we just steer them past the Earth, allowing rock and planet to trade slightly momentum, with the results of an Earth shifting on a barely totally different monitor and an asteroid moving on a significantly completely different one.
Suppose that there were ten billion folks (one other overestimate - there are about 6.Four billion on the time of writing). Atmospheric issues are ignored here since it is far more power-efficient to manually take away the Earth's ambiance, move the planet, and reinstall it. The precept here is far the identical, with the railguns behaving somewhat like discretized versions of thrusters, providing instantaneous changes in velocity as opposed to sustained regular change. You could possibly build an engine at both pole and this would not have any effect, what is billiards however anyplace else and the continuously altering angle of thrust will trigger the Earth to behave somewhat like a free Catherine Wheel-type firework. Suppose everyone on the planet weighed 100kg (which is an overestimate, 70kg is more prefer it, probably much less). You might reuse the same asteroid many times, looping it round a few fuel giants and back to gain heaps extra kinetic vitality from these gas giants in the identical method that Earth just gained velocity from the rock. This construction wouldn't be in orbit across the Sun, but static, remaining aloft utilizing the radiation strain of catching and reflecting solar vitality. Gravity help. This is a technique initially proposed as a means of transferring Earth to a better orbit across the Sun so as to save it from the Sun's inevitable Red Giant expansion.
Just use it to tack towards the direction through which the Earth is travelling, gradually slowing its orbital velocity and rising the orbit's eccentricity, till the orbit passes inside the Roche restrict where the Earth is torn apart by tidal forces. If there was some technique to electrically cost the Earth, by dumping a lot of identically charged particles onto the Earth or just ionizing particles already on Earth - a big amber rod might perhaps be in order - then we might use magnetic fields to drive the planet within the course we wished it to go. Way right down to 1021 tonnes. The Earth may be very huge, transferring very fast, and subsequently very troublesome to stop or even decelerate. Better, you may use many, many asteroids one after the other in a gradual stream, and reduce down the total time considerably. And lastly, suppose that all of them jumped at exactly the same immediate, which after all they won't, seeing as the time distinction between the quickest watch and the slowest will probably be over five minutes. Getting everybody on the planet to leap at the identical time.
You soar up, the Earth goes down: you fall down, the Earth comes up to satisfy you. Suppose they had been all at the exact same level on Earth (which they won't be, thus mitigating the results of the jump). Maybe. Or better yet: the Earth already has a standing magnetic subject; maybe we may assemble a cylinder of cable around it, and cross current to maneuver it utilizing Lorentz forces. Construct an enormous photo voltaic sail with a significant mass. Since the Sun carries the vast majority of the entire mass of the solar system, any force which strikes it's more likely to drag all of the planets along with it. Direct matter propulsion. Same methodology as above, simply utilizing gigantic mass drivers/railguns to fireplace huge portions of matter away from Earth, instead of a rocket exhaust. The most obvious main downside with this method is that proper now there aren't even theories as to how you may probably construct rocket engines of the kind proposed here.
ISSN: 0004-7163(print)
Things Of Interest
Ira Avera (2026-09-28)
Ceres, the photo voltaic system's largest asteroid, has less than 1/40,000th the mass of Earth; the Moon, a mere 1/80th. These objects are the heaviest you're probably to find - there are heavier moons and complete planets you would think about using, however to be sincere from this point of view it looks more like utilizing a succession of tons of, hundreds or tens of hundreds of smaller asteroid impacts would be a better bet. That's a trillion times heavier than all of humanity. Altogether that is a mass of one billion tonnes of humanity jumping ten metres in the air. Jumping up and down to try to move the Earth is like mounting a fan on a sailboat, pointing the fan on the sail, and expecting the boat to maneuver forwards. Note that the Earth does not and won't behave like a stable, inflexible billiard ball under such large impacts as these. Basically, the point right here is that modelling impacts like these is a difficult enterprise. It entails asteroids, like the above methodology, solely instead of direct impacts, this time we just steer them past the Earth, allowing rock and planet to trade slightly momentum, with the results of an Earth shifting on a barely totally different monitor and an asteroid moving on a significantly completely different one.
Suppose that there were ten billion folks (one other overestimate - there are about 6.Four billion on the time of writing). Atmospheric issues are ignored here since it is far more power-efficient to manually take away the Earth's ambiance, move the planet, and reinstall it. The precept here is far the identical, with the railguns behaving somewhat like discretized versions of thrusters, providing instantaneous changes in velocity as opposed to sustained regular change. You could possibly build an engine at both pole and this would not have any effect, what is billiards however anyplace else and the continuously altering angle of thrust will trigger the Earth to behave somewhat like a free Catherine Wheel-type firework. Suppose everyone on the planet weighed 100kg (which is an overestimate, 70kg is more prefer it, probably much less). You might reuse the same asteroid many times, looping it round a few fuel giants and back to gain heaps extra kinetic vitality from these gas giants in the identical method that Earth just gained velocity from the rock. This construction wouldn't be in orbit across the Sun, but static, remaining aloft utilizing the radiation strain of catching and reflecting solar vitality. Gravity help. This is a technique initially proposed as a means of transferring Earth to a better orbit across the Sun so as to save it from the Sun's inevitable Red Giant expansion.
You soar up, the Earth goes down: you fall down, the Earth comes up to satisfy you. Suppose they had been all at the exact same level on Earth (which they won't be, thus mitigating the results of the jump). Maybe. Or better yet: the Earth already has a standing magnetic subject; maybe we may assemble a cylinder of cable around it, and cross current to maneuver it utilizing Lorentz forces. Construct an enormous photo voltaic sail with a significant mass. Since the Sun carries the vast majority of the entire mass of the solar system, any force which strikes it's more likely to drag all of the planets along with it. Direct matter propulsion. Same methodology as above, simply utilizing gigantic mass drivers/railguns to fireplace huge portions of matter away from Earth, instead of a rocket exhaust. The most obvious main downside with this method is that proper now there aren't even theories as to how you may probably construct rocket engines of the kind proposed here.