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Lost Planet Explains

1. A computer simulation suggests that the solar system originally had five gas giant planets rather than the current four, and that the fifth planet was ejected from the solar system around 4 billion years ago after a violent encounter with Jupiter. 2. Previous models had difficulty explaining the positions of Uranus and Neptune. This scenario provides a potential resolution by starting with the planets closer together and having one planet ejected during their repositioning, ending up with a solar system structure that matches observations. 3. Additional evidence for this scenario includes that it allows for Jupiter to have migrated outward from a closer orbit to the Sun, and could have disturbed the Kuiper belt in a way that explains the late heavy bombardment of

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51 views2 pages

Lost Planet Explains

1. A computer simulation suggests that the solar system originally had five gas giant planets rather than the current four, and that the fifth planet was ejected from the solar system around 4 billion years ago after a violent encounter with Jupiter. 2. Previous models had difficulty explaining the positions of Uranus and Neptune. This scenario provides a potential resolution by starting with the planets closer together and having one planet ejected during their repositioning, ending up with a solar system structure that matches observations. 3. Additional evidence for this scenario includes that it allows for Jupiter to have migrated outward from a closer orbit to the Sun, and could have disturbed the Kuiper belt in a way that explains the late heavy bombardment of

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Anastasia
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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NewScientist

1 October 2011, p. 14

Lost planet explains solar system puzzle

Lisa Grossman

THE solar system once had five gas-giant planets rather than the four it has today.
That’s the conclusion from a computer simulation of the solar system’s evolution, which
suggests the fifth giant was hurled into interstellar space some 4 billion years ago, after a
violent encounter with Jupiter.
Astronomers have struggled for decades to explain the solar system’s structure. In
particular, Uranus and Neptune couldn’t have formed where they are today – the disc of
gas that congealed into the planets would have been too thin at the edge of the solar
system to account for the ice giants’ bulk.
A more likely scenario is that the planets were packed close together when they
formed, and only spread out when the disc of gas and dust from which they grew was
used up. The tighter orbits of extrasolar planet systems support this idea.
But the great gravitational bullies of the solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and
Neptune, would not have gone quietly to their new homes. Previous simulations show
that at least one planet, usually thought to be Uranus or Neptune, should have been
ejected from the solar system in the shuffle.
“People didn’t know how to resolve that,” says David Nesvorny of the Southwest
Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Now Nesvorny proposes a solution: a sacrificial ice giant between Saturn and
Uranus that took the fall for its planetary siblings.
“If you start with five gaseous planets, then you see again that you lose one
planet,” he says, “in a large fraction of cases, you end up with a good solar system
analogue.”
Nesvorny ran a total of 6000 computer simulations with four or five gas giants in
various initial positions around the sun. His simulated runs started shortly after the gas
disc dissipated and lasted for 100 million years, long enough for the planets to settle into
their final orbits.
All but 10 percent of the four-planet simulations wound up with only three left, he
says. But in half the five-planet simulations, they ended with four in a solar system that
looks remarkably like our own. The best results occurred when the fifth planet started
off between Saturn and Uranus and ended up being ejected after an encounter with
Jupiter. His work has been accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The five-planet scenario solves a few other mysteries as well. For the inner rocky
planets to survive intact while the outer gas giants jockeyed for position, some previous
simulations show that Jupiter must have “jumped” from a position closer to the sun to its
current orbit.
“This ‘jumping Jupiter’ theory is very difficult to achieve for the four-planet
system. But it’s a natural consequence of the five-planet system,” Nesvorny says. If
Jupiter flung the lost ice giant from the solar system, it would have lost angular
momentum and receded from the sun. ‘That comes for free from the set-up.”
The reshuffling could also have disturbed the still-forming Kuiper belt and Oort
cloud – reservoirs of proto-planets that lie beyond the current orbit of Neptune. This
would have flung debris toward the inner solar system, which could explain the period
of violence thought to have occurred 4 billion years ago, when the moon gained most of
its craters – the period astronomers call the late heavy bombardment.
The long-lost planet may still be out there. In May Takahiro Sumi of Osaka
University in Japan and colleagues announced that they had spotted lonely planets
wandering through the dark space between stars. These “lone wolves” may be even
more common than star-bound worlds, the team reported. If the fifth gas giant is still out
there, it will be one of the wandering exoplanets.
“Our solar system looks calm and quiet now, but we pretty much know that it had
this violent past,” Nesvorny says. “The question is how violent was it?”.

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