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Old 15-04-2009, 05:38 PM
Jay-qu
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 137
Ok well lets completely ignore the logistics of making mass dissapear for a moment and do a quick consideration of the centre of mass of the planet/planet or planet/sun system.

COM = (M1*r1+M2*r2)/(M1+M2)

Lets do this for the Jupiter/Sun system as it will probably have the largest effect (upon removing).

COM = (1Ms*0+0.000955Ms*(7.78*10^11))/1.000955Ms

Here I have put the mass of jupiter in terms of the sun and placed the sun at the origin. This gives the jupiter sun system a centre of mass of ~740 thousand km from the centre of the sun. This may sound like a lot, but the sun has a radius of 1.4 million km, so the centre of mass is well inside the sun.

I would suggest then that removing jupiter would not have much effect of the sun - but it would certainly have a large effect on the asteroid belt, probably sending a lot of rocks into eccentric orbits..
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