WHAT IF THE EARTH WAS MADE OF BLUEBERRIES?

1. COMPLETE COLLAPSE

This question was actually addressed in a paper earlier this year by Dr Anders Sandberg at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute. If the Earth were instantly replaced with an equivalent volume of closely packed blueberries, they would immediately begin to collapse under their own gravity. The outer 715km of the planet would plummet inwards towards the core.

2. JUICE AND JAM

The collapsing berries would pulp themselves into juice and then boil into jam from the heat caused by friction and compressive heating as the planet implodes. Berry-quakes and jam-volcanoes would rage across the surface. The inner core would be a smoothie, compressed into a solid ball, with a temperature of several thousand degrees Celsius. The reduced size of the planet would cause it to rotate every 19 hours.

3. NO MOON!

Berries are less dense than rock, so the Earth would have less mass. This wouldn’t leave it with enough gravity to hold on to the Moon, which would fly off into space. The air squeezed out from the spaces between the berries as the planet collapses amounts to more than 200 times the volume of Earth’s atmosphere. The lower gravity means the atmosphere extends out six times further, causing satellites to re-enter and burn up.