Paradox please. Can we destroy stars & planets?

[General Karthos]

If you could blow up a planet in a system, you will change the balance of gravity in this system, after a few hundred or thousand years the other planets will change their orbits, same for comets and asteroids.

Even if Jupiter were destroyed utterly in our star system (as in, all its mass vanished without a trace), none of the planets would change their orbits. The gravitational effect of Jupiter on all the other planets is negligible. It does intercept the occasional rogue asteroid that might impact one of the inner planets, but it really has almost no gravitational effect on us.

 

[sterrius]

What?

Jupiter gravity is so strong it affects everything in the solar system.

For example jupiter is breaking the already unstable mercury orbit.

Some scientists, including Jacques Laskar of the Paris Observatory, as well as Konstantin Batygin and Gregory Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz believe that Jupiter’s gravity may lead to the destruction of Mercury. After running some simulations the group found that Jupiter is perturbing Mercury’s already eccentric orbit. They arrived at four possible end results: Mercury will crash into the Sun, Mercury will be ejected from the solar system altogether, Mercury will crash into Venus, or Mercury will crash into Earth. None is pleasant for Mercury and the last would be even less pleasant for humans. Not to fear though, none of these possible outcomes will happen in the next 5-7 billion years anyway.

yes yes, the sun will blow up long before its a problem to us and can not happen for lack of time, but still makes the point that jupiter gravity affects every object in the solar system.

Another example about how planets in solar system affect each other. Its saturn that keeps jupiter in its place. Without it jupiter would start to go to a closer orbit (jupiter was born much closer to the sun and was moving to a orbit around mars, the birth of saturn stopped this and made jupiter walk all the way back to present position.

in return saturn was pushed 2 AU away from the sun. (From 7.5 to 9.5 AU).


Earth and venus also affect each other for example. Increasing and decreasing each other orbit as they get close/far away.

And we're talking about two small planets.

 

[stripe7]

Define destroyed, Jupiter is a gas giant. Destroyed as is turned into a mass of gas and debris? That much free debris in a solar system would not be healthy for any inhabitants. Turned into a highly compressed form of matter? Might not make a difference to other planets then. Ejected from the solar system, that much mass going would perturb the orbits of all the remaining planets.

 

[AG_Wittmann]

A Gasgiant need at the begin a rocky core to gain all the hydrogen and helium in his orbit around his star, so a star, so our sun had a hearth of stone too.

Oh, and a gasgiant is dangerous for space ships at his orbit.

From the wiki about the Juno Probe for 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)

Juno's planned polar orbit is highly ellipitical and takes it close to the poles—within 4,300 kilometers (2,672 mi)—but then far beyond even Callisto's orbit.[28] Each orbit takes 14 days and the spacecraft is expected to complete 37 orbits until the end of the mission.

This type of orbit helps the spacecraft avoid any long-term contact with Jupiter's radiation belts, which can cause damage to spacecraft electronics and solar panels.[28][29] The "Juno Radiation Vault", with 1-centimeter-thick titanium walls, will also aid in protecting and shielding Juno's electronics.[30] However, the radiation is so destructive that the instruments JunoCam and Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) are expected to last only through the eighth orbit. The microwave radiometer is planned to last 11 orbits.[31] In comparison, Juno will receive much lower levels of radiation than the Galileo orbiter at its equatorial orbit.