What If The Earth Collided With Another Planet?

WHAT IF

Transcript

00:00 (dramatic music)

00:10 Ah, what a view.

00:13 The air over here is especially...

00:15 Wait, what is this doing here?

00:18 This is WHAT IF.

00:20 And here's what would happen

00:22 if another planet smashed into Earth.

00:26 About 50 billion rogue planets

00:28 are roaming the Milky Way

00:30 with no host star to hold onto.

00:33 They don't give off any light of their own,

00:35 and that makes them difficult to spot.

00:37 Last time a stray planetoid

00:39 the size of Mars smashed into Earth,

00:41 it scattered our planet's young crust into space,

00:44 where gravity glued those particles

00:46 into what we now call the Moon.

00:50 This time, it would be all hellfire and brimstone

00:53 with no survivors left.

00:55 And here's a timeline of how things break down.

01:00 A few weeks before the collision,

01:01 an unknown object would appear in the sky.

01:04 It wouldn't happen overnight.

01:05 No, we'd know something was coming.

01:08 We'd see the planet slowly growing bigger,

01:10 until one day, it was as big as the Moon.

01:13 It would seem as if everything was unfolding

01:15 at a relatively slow pace,

01:17 but that's only because of the huge distances involved.

01:20 Out there in space,

01:21 the rogue planet would rush towards us

01:23 at a speed of 11 km/s (15 mi/s).

01:29 When the uninvited space intruder

01:31 came into the Moon's orbit,

01:32 bad things would start to happen.

01:34 The gravitational pull of the alien planet

01:37 would make the tides on Earth

01:38 eight times larger than they are now.

01:42 Floods would begin to rampage

01:44 through the coastline cities.

01:46 And still, the megatsunamis are yet to come.

01:52 28 hours before the collision,

01:54 the gravity of both planets

01:56 pulling themselves towards each other

01:57 would speed up the process.

02:00 The incoming planet

02:01 would hit a speed of 60 km/s (15 mi/s).

02:04 Megatsunamis would plot their way across the oceans.

02:07 With this would come lightning storms,

02:09 plus hurricanes and tornadoes so large

02:12 they wouldn't have a number on the category scale.

02:15 If you didn't book yourself a vacation

02:17 aboard a spaceship that would take you to outer space,

02:19 your time on this planet would be running out.

02:24 Three minutes before the collision,

02:26 the rogue planet enters the Earth's atmosphere.

02:29 Provided you hadn't already been killed by the lightning,

02:32 hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes or volcanoes,

02:35 you'd see the rocky invader

02:36 completely filling the sky above you.

02:41 Nanoseconds before the collision,

02:43 the atmospheres of both planets

02:44 would be compressed together and glow brightly.

02:47 It would get so hot

02:48 that everything on the side of the Earth

02:49 about to get hit would instantly vaporize.

02:54 For the rest of the Earth,

02:55 the ground would become scorching magma.

03:02 Upon impact,

03:03 the collision would cause friction

03:04 between the two planets.

03:06 Millions of tons of superheated rock

03:08 would be sending a wall of fire in all directions.

03:11 While the hellfire would rush across Earth's surface,

03:14 the planet's inner core

03:16 would be melting it from the inside out.

03:18 This would have one big outcome.

03:20 The Earth would collapse in on itself.

03:23 The end of the era.

03:28 If you did manage to get away in a spaceship,

03:31 you'd see the massive remnants of both planets

03:33 catapulted into different orbits.

03:35 Some of them would hit other planets.

03:38 Others would be fired out of the Solar System entirely.

03:41 Whatever was left

03:42 would form a new asteroid belt encircling the Sun.

03:46 None of this would give any hint

03:47 that there was once intelligent life on planet Earth.

03:51 But hey, you can sleep well

03:53 knowing that this won't ever happen.

03:55 Well, most likely not.

03:57 In any case,

03:58 you've got time to watch a few more WHAT IFs.

04:01 ♪ MUSIC ♪

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