What would happen if Jupiter and Mars switched places?

It will, but gradually. At it's closest, Mars is 225 million km away from the earth while Jupiter is 588 million km away. So while Jupiter is almost twice as close than it was, it is still reasonably far away. We would most definitely have a much ... read more

Tags: Earth and Mars switch, new solar system, what would happen if All About Space is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site. read more

Jupiter is massive. If it switched places with Earth, it will gobble up the moon(you didnt say Moon) and disturb a lot of the planets’ orbit. Venus is 0.3 AU from Jupiter, so Jupiter will heavilly disturb Venus’s orbit. Same with the entire solar system. read more

The next graph shows the altered system. Notice how wide the range of orbital distances for each planet has become. For Earth, that's because it's now closer to Jupiter; for Mars, because it's the monkey in the middle. Venus changes hardly at all, while Mercury gets batted around like a pingpong ball. read more