A planet in our solar system could have caused disturbances in Earth’s orbit around the Sun that would have moved our world too far from the Sun, making it impossible for life as we know it to exist.
Fortunately, that planet could not act and the Earth is today a world with life.
This has been verified in a study carried out by the team led by Stephen Kane, from the University of California at Riverside, United States.
The planet in question would have been in the orbital strip between Mars and Jupiter and could have caused not only the Earth to move too far from the Sun but also to leave the solar system and for practical purposes become a rogue planet.
The results of the study, as well as the simulations carried out for it, have been based on two details that, in light of what is known today about other solar systems, are unusual.
One of them is the non-existence in our solar system of planets with sizes between those of the terrestrial type (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) and that of the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The terrestrial planet The largest (rocky) is Earth, and the smallest gas giant is Neptune, whose diameter is 4 times that of Earth and whose mass is 17 times that of Earth.There is no planet with mass and diameter intermediate, unlike what is seen in other solar systems.
Another detail is the space between the orbit of Mars and that of Jupiter. Said space is empty of planets, containing only asteroids and other minor bodies. It is also not normal in other solar systems.
Searching for an explanation for these two details, Kane and his colleagues ran dynamic computer simulations of a hypothetical planet, located between Mars and Jupiter, with a number of different masses, and then looked at the effects that hypothetical planet had on each case. on the orbits of all the other planets.
Graphic montage of photos showing the planets of our solar system and the main moons of Jupiter. (Image: NASA JPL/ASU)
The results indicate that, depending on that planet’s mass and exact location, its presence could have eventually driven Mercury and Venus, as well as Earth, out of the solar system. In the case of Earth, that, of course, would have made life on it impossible.
The study is titled “The Dynamical Consequences of a Super-Earth in the Solar System”. And it has been published in the academic journal The Planetary Science Journal. (Source: NCYT de Amazings)