Answer 1:
This is very open-ended since many details have
been left unspecified (e.g. how the planet is
destroyed, the objects which are to be affected,
the time scale of interest, ...), but here are
some possibilities.
If the planet is broken up into a
bunch of pieces, then those pieces would
begin to drift around in the solar system.
They may form an
asteroid belt, like what our solar system
has between Mars and Jupiter. Alternatively, the
pieces could rain down on other planets, causing
meteor showers (meteor showers are mostly
caused by comets, but the pieces of the planet
in this instance would be analogous to the pieces
which come off of
comets when they approach the sun) or a
more serious
impact event.
One can also imagine simply turning all of the
mass of the planet into energy. For an Earth-mass
planet, this works out to
~5.4×1041 J. ("J" means
Joule, which is a unit of energy) For
comparison, the
sun puts out
383×1024 J per second (the
luminosity
measurement on that page). Thus, the energy from
the destruction of that planet is about what the
sun puts out in about 44 million years. This seems
like a lot, but
supernovae can release 1044 J,
1000× more than
our exploding planet.
Considering how hard it is
to spot supernovae, I think it is safe to say that
anyone in the same galactic neighborhood might
take notice, but observers on the far side of the
galaxy would have to be looking in exactly the
right place at the right time to even see it.
Removing or dispersing the matter that made up the
planet would also change the gravity acting
on the
other objects in the solar system. This means that
there would be changes to their
orbits,
tides, etc.
Jupiter is known to affect
trajectories and impact rates of cosmic bodies
on the other members of our solar system, so
removing a planet like that could lead to changes
in the impacts experienced by the remaining
planets.
There would certainly be other effects, but it is
impossible to explore all of them here.
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