IT MIGHT BE a Photoshop job but this was so stunning and slightly terrifying that we had to show it to you.
This, according to Reddit.com user jb2386, is what the scene would be “if Jupiter was the same distance away from Earth as the moon is”:

IT MIGHT BE a Photoshop job but this was so stunning and slightly terrifying that we had to show it to you.
This, according to Reddit.com user jb2386, is what the scene would be “if Jupiter was the same distance away from Earth as the moon is”:

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When you see something like this, and then remember that Jupiter is a midget compared to other planets and stars out there, it just shows how insignificant we are
Here’s a video of what it would look like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Yi58jtNdY
hit play and scroll to the right to see exactly how tiny we are :
Blows my mind every time!!
Found it! A good idea of size in our universe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4iD-9GSW-0&feature=youtube_gdata_player
If Jupiter was as far away as the moon was, we’d be well inside it’s Roche limit and it’d break the planet into small pieces through tidal stresses. We’d basicly become a new jovian ring (Jupiter has rings like Saturn’s rings, just smaller and harder to see).
of course it’d only be stunning for as long as it took for the 1000 m tides to swamp vast portions of the planet on a daily basis, and for the gravitational stresses to begin to tear the planet apart, eventually stripping our atmosphere and transforming the entire cradle of humanity into a poisonous sulphurous volcanic hell like Io
I wonder what life (if any) on Earth would have turned out like if we were actually a moon of Jupiter but still inside the habitable zone. I assume our planet would be completely different because of the tidal forces of Jupiters gravity.
It appears that if Jupiter was much bigger, it would be much smaller. Well, somewhat. Here’s the wikipedia section on Jupiter’s mass:
Theoretical models indicate that if Jupiter had much more mass than it does at present, the planet would shrink.[27] For small changes in mass, the radius would not change appreciably, and above about 500 M⊕ (1.6 Jupiter masses)[27] the interior would become so much more compressed under the increased gravitation force that the planet’s volume would decrease despite the increasing amount of matter. As a result, Jupiter is thought to have about as large a diameter as a planet of its composition and evolutionary history can achieve. The process of further shrinkage with increasing mass would continue until appreciable stellar ignition is achieved as in high-mass brown dwarfs around 50 Jupiter masses.[28]
Pretty cool, I wonder is that the place where Phil Hogan comes from?
Jupiter has 66 confirmed moons in orbit however the four most massive “Galilean” moons were among the first discovered and the most famous seeing as they were the first objects to be found to orbits a body other than earth and include Ganymede, Lo, Europa and Callisto.
Hmmm i see you nicked the picture from http://reddit.com !
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