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This explains our strange solar system arrangment

An artist impression of Jupiter 
Jupiter may have acted like a giant wrecking ball in the newborn solar system, roaming in to destroy an early generation of inner planets before retreating to its current orbit, researchers say.
This finding of Jupiter crashing other planets may help to explain why our solar system is so different from hundreds of other planetary systems that have been recently discovered, and life as we know it on Earth might be rarer than previously thought, added scientists.
Researchers modeled a leading scenario for the formation of Jupiter and Saturn known as the "Grand Tack" where in Jupiter migrated towards the sun until Saturn was formed, which caused Jupiter to reverse course and migrate towards its current orbit. They calculated what might happened if a set of rocky planets formed in the inner solar system before Jupiter migrated inward.
in the early solar system, the sun was surrounded by a dense disk of gas and dust. This suggests that any inner rocky planets forming might have eventually become super-Earths such as many of exoplanets that astronomers have seen around other stars.
However, as Jupiter moved inward, its gravitational pull would have slug these nascent inner worlds into close-knit, overlapping orbits. This would set off a series of collisions that smashed these newborn worlds into pieces.
The results imply that our terrestrial planets formed after Jupiter's early migration wiped slate clean and set the stage for formation pf poor gas objects.
Jupiter-like planets are uncommon - only 10 percent of sun like stars host them. This suggests that our planetary system must be rare. In addition, only the formation of Saturn in our solar system pulled Jupiter back to allow formation of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars to form.
One implication of this findings is that life as is known on Earth might be rarer in the universe than previously thought.


Ed Tesla

Ed Tesla

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