Was A Fifth Gas Giant Ejected From The Solar System?

[Wanderlust]

http://www.skymania....t-the-boot.html

 

 

Our Sun’s family of worlds houses four rocky planets and four giant planets. But what if there were once five giant planets? This is a likely situation according to computer simulations performed by David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado.

 

He explored thousands of possible scenarios of the dynamics of the early Solar System and found that the present configuration of planets is much more likely to be reproduced by the simulations if there were initially five giant planets instead of four.

 

The fifth giant planet most likely formed between Saturn and Uranus. “Given that this planet had mass comparable to that of Uranus and Neptune, and was originally located beyond the orbit of Saturn, it is more likely that it looked just like Uranus or Neptune,”

Prior to the fifth giant planet embarking on its journey into the unknown, it played a crucial role in the formation of our Solar System. “Before it gets ejected from the Solar System, the fifth planet has encounters with Jupiter and makes Jupiter jump,” says Nesvorny.

 

“This is believed to help the terrestrial planets. If Jupiter’s orbit evolved more smoothly, resonances would sweep through the inner Solar System, and the orbits of the terrestrial planets could become more eccentric, and be destabilized.” Thus if the fifth giant planet hadn’t been evicted then one of the terrestrial planets, including Earth, could have taken its place in outer space.

The recent discovery of free floating planets gives weight to this theory of a giant planet being ejected from the Solar System. Is one of these lone wanderers a former planetary neighbour of ours?

 

What a romantic thought.. i wonder where it is now.. It would be long gone, somewhere else in the galaxy entirely

Edited October 1, 2011 by CraigD
Fixed broken link

[Fluxus]

http://news.discovery.com/space/was-a-giant-planet-ejected-from-the-solar-system.html

 

Sounds interesting, though I didn't do well enough at Astronomy 101 to comment on the veracity of the claims. :D

[Turtle]

http://www.skymania....t-the-boot.html

 

 

What a romantic thought.. i wonder where it is now.. It would be long gone, somewhere else in the galaxy entirely

 

your link doesn't work, but fluxusese's does. seems reasonable that the model(s) ought to give an approximate location for an ejected 5^th planet if it is run far enough, or at least enough data to make that projection. :smart: