A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that Jupiter may have destroyed newborn planets in the early Solar System.
It could give a reason for why we lack planets closer to the Sun. “Our solar system is looking increasingly like an oddball,” study co-author Gregory Laughlin said, according to National Geographic.
It’s common to find exoplanets orbiting closer to their star than Mercury’s orbit around our Sun. The team believes that Jupiter’s violent actions could’ve resulted in Earth and other rocky planets being formed, with the Sun clearing up the rest of the debris.
Laughlin added, “It’s the same thing we worry about if satellites were to be destroyed in low Earth orbit. Their fragments would start smashing into other satellites, and you’d risk a chain reaction of collisions. Our work indicates that Jupiter would have created just such a collisional cascade in the inner solar system.”
