• Question: Could two planets ever swap places (or at least move place a lot)?

    Asked by wimpolel1 to Kat, Andrew, Katie, Sadaf on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Andrew Swale

      Andrew Swale answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      As far as I’m aware this would not be possible

      However, the closest thing to this I can think of is where planetary orbits overlap such as with Neptune and Pluto

Comments

  • Photo: Christina

    Christina commented on :

    *poking head in from Indium zone* – theoretically it would be possible if a another big body (say a moon sized asteroid or something) hit a planet that sent it spinning outwards in hte solar system… however, it would have be exactly the right size, coming it at exactly the right angle and speed to not destroy the planet and not to send the planet just shooting out of the solar system.. plus space is big and so the likelihood of two big things like that hitting each other is very small!

    In fact, given enough time these things probably do happen – in fact 4 billion years ago scientists think that Neptune and Uranus (two of the furthest planets in our solar system) swapped places!!