What would happen if we had an extra planet in our solar system? Not in the margins like default Planet Nine Beyond Pluto, but in the middle of Mars and Jupiter?
According to new research simulated a Super Earth – a term used for a world that is more massive than Earth but lighter than a gas giant – and records the fate of all eight planets. The results show that the smallest changes in the orbit of Jupiter, which is more massive than all the other planets combined, have a profound and devastating effect on the orbital balance of the other planets.
Stephen Kane, an astronomer at the University of California, Riverside and the study’s sole author, said statement (Opens in a new tab). “Throw more gears into the mix and things break.”
Related: Super-Earth: An exoplanet that is about the same size as Earth
Our solar system has long been considered a model for all planetary systems. However, in the last twenty-five years, it has quickly and decisively become inland due to the lack of its own super-earth.
NASA exoplanet hunting missions like Kepler transiting exoplanet survey satellite (male goat) helped astronomers realize that such planets are surprisingly common in the Milky Way: one-third of all exoplanets are super-Earths. They believe that our solar system does not have a giant Earth because of Jupiter pressing formation As it migrates dramatically towards the asteroid belt and back again, during that time sender Lots of things in the sun. So they had a hard time understanding nature like that is common in other solar systems, due to a lack of local data that would help them model composition and other properties.
Kane told Space.com in an email that this “has been a recurring source of frustration” among the exoplanet community. “So my study aims to answer the question: What if your wish came true?”
The four inner planets are particularly vulnerable
Super-Earth can range from 2 to 10 times Big as our planetSo Kane simulated planets with different masses and placed them at various distances in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It starts with a super-Earth twice the distance between Earth and the Sun, or two astronomical units (AU; 185 million miles or 297 million km) and the distance adds up to the outer edge of the asteroid belt, at 4 AU (371 million miles or 597 million km). This led to thousands of simulations, each starting today and ending 10 million years later. Every 100 years, Kane records the consequences for each of the eight planets in the solar system.
These results show that the four inner planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars and Earth – are highly susceptible to orbital changes. Some or all four of the planets have been excluded from the solar system in many cases. None of the thousands of simulations show any deviation from Jupiter or Saturn. But in some cases, the two gas giants have dumped other planets, including the newly added super-Earth as well as Uranus, causing havoc among their moons.
“I wouldn’t expect much for the moons to remain in stable orbits around the planet as they are launched out of the solar system,” said Kane.
When a planet is like Earth’s mass seven times glis 163c It is positioned slightly farther from Mars, and simulations show that the orbits of the four inner planets become unstable. The orbits of Earth and Venus have become sufficiently eccentric or egg-shaped that they are subject to a “catastrophic close encounter”. Their changing orbits release energy, which is transmitted to Mercury, and ejected soon after. Mars only lasted half-time, and Earth and Venus traveled about eight million years.
The gas giant can hold its own
Unlike the terrestrial planets, the gas giants, especially Jupiter and Saturn, are less affected by extra planets. Their orbits are only slightly unstable at the location of the Mean Motion Resonance (MMR) – the specific point at which two planets have an orbital period that is a simple integer ratio of one another. (For example, an object in MMR 3:1 with Jupiter orbits the Sun exactly three times for every one orbit of Jupiter.)
So when Kane set himself glis 163cSimilar to a super-Earth in the outer asteroid belt at 3.8 AU, it ends at 8:5 MMR with Jupiter and 4:1 MMR with Saturn. As a result, the orbits of the two gas giants became egg-shaped, so much so that they cleared first the giant Earth and then Uranus. Kane’s study found that in this case, even the slightest change in the outer solar system greatly affected the inner planets. Mars was overthrown two million years after the planet Uranus, for example.
“What struck me most about this study was the sensitivity of the entire solar system structure to Jupiter’s resonances,” Kane told Space.com in an email.
The addition of a giant Earth is less messy if the planet is positioned near the end of the asteroid belt by near 3 astronomical units (278 million miles, or 447 million kilometers), according to the study. Here, it will interact minimally with the giant planets and cause minimal disturbance in the solar system, said Kane.
In this case, “one of the big gaps that needs to be explored further is the stability of the solar system over longer timescales (say, a billion years),” Manasvi Lingam, an astronomer at the Florida Institute of Technology who was not involved in the research. the study, Space.com.org said via email.
Overall, this research shows “how important Jupiter is to the dynamics of the solar system,” Kane told Space.com, “and that even relatively small changes can make a big difference to the stability of our system.”
Giant planets are probably common in most solar systems because giant planets like Jupiter are rare: only ten percent of sun-like stars host giant planets at distances as far from the Sun as we are, and the number goes down for older stars.
Kane said researchers have often speculated whether our solar system could safely host an extra planet between Mars and Jupiter, and the answer appears to be no.
“If you are an exoplanet and you find a genie in a bottle, please don’t expect the solar system to have a super-earth,” Ken chirp (Opens in a new tab). “You might accidentally mess up the solar system!”
This research is described in a paper (Opens in a new tab) Published February 28 in Planetary Science.
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