What If The Earth Collided With Another Planet?
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TVTranscript
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 ♪