HERCÓLUBUS OR RED PLANET: A GIGANTIC PLANET COMING TOWARDS EARTH?
Currently, there is a story circulating of a gigantic red planet that is about to hit our world within a very short time. It is alleged that this story is not fiction but reality. If so then, where is this doomsday planet?
The version in question does not give many details about this new gigantic planet: only that it would be red, that would be 5 or 6 times the size of Jupiter (the largest planet in the Solar System), would pass next to the Sun, and that this would be a very short-term prophecy.
HOW BIG WOULD IT BE?
The part about "5 or 6 times bigger than Jupiter" is a bit ambiguous, because normally astronomical objects larger than Jupiter are usually classified by their mass and not their diameters.
Jupiter has a diameter of about 140 000 kilometers, 11 times more than Earth's.
Planets so large typically have a very large gravitational field, which enabled them to catch a large amount of gas in the early times, so their predominant substances are usually hydrogen, helium, methane and water.
Assuming that the new gigantic planet has the same chemical composition we could assume the same density and calculate its diameter. With five times the mass we would be talking about 5 times the volume of Jupiter, what would (we can see with a calculator) give a diameter of 240 000 kilometers. Although, paradoxically, it is likely that rather than starting to grow in diameter it would end compacting itself, precisely for having so much mass.
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