[greenslime (OP)]

Would it cause our planet to become dislodged in the solar system?

[Bored chemist]

For one of the gas giants to explode there would need to be a major change in the nature of the universe. How could we hope to predict what would happen to the Earth in those circumstances?

[graham.d]

Hyperthetically, should Jupiter (say) explode and the resulting debris disperse, it would affect the earth's orbit only very slightly. I suppose much of the debris may stay in roughly the same orbit, but in any case, despite the size of the planet, it is a very long way off. A danger may be disruption of the asteroid belt which may cause a number of large asteroids to descend on earth with a devastating outcome.

I won't lose sleep worrying about this, though, Jupiter seems fairly stable at the moment.

[greenslime (OP)]

Would it even be possible for an explosion in space because it's a vacuum right?

[Murchie85]

Stars do it all the time by fusion, although I wouldn't worry about jupiter as it has no where near the sufficient mass to collapse into a protostar and hence ingnite and explode via fusion. Other forms of explosions e.g outright ignition of the gasses would not happen either as its not like you could take a lighter to them and kick it off, it would take huge amounts of pressure and gravitational energy to even heat the stuff up a bit. If say it did happen to explode its effects would not be felt on earth dramatically, although the orbit may change slightly depending on the inverse law of gravity. It would be a problem as jupiter although deflects a couple of meteors our way, it does deflect the large majority to safety.

[Pseudoscience-is-malarkey]

There is really only two objects in our solar system that have a direct effect on our planet: our moon and the Sun. But Jupiter is a beast. A gravitational beast that sucks in asteroids and comets that could otherwise hit us. Bad news for us if it were to somehow vanish.