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Illustration comparing the planets of the Solar System and the Sun on the same scale. The planets are shown to scale relative to each other but their distances are not. From left to right the bodies are: the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.<\/p>\n
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Jupiter is responsible for both enabling and organizing the architecture of our inner solar system, as well as creating the conditions necessary for Earth\u2019s own formation, say the authors of a new paper appearing in the journal Science Advances. <\/p>\n
Our massive gas giant planet\u2019s 11.5-year solar orbit has long been known to be somewhat anomalous among the thousands of extrasolar planetary systems that we have been capable of observing thus far.<\/p>\n
But the team\u2019s computer models in this new study put an unexpected twist on the timing and influence Jupiter had in creating the architecture of our early inner solar system. Jupiter\u2019s early growth within 1.5 million years after the birth of our solar system, some 4.56 billion years ago, directly influenced where the building blocks of Earth and other terrestrial planets accumulated. <\/p>\n
By depleting gas from the inner Solar System, Jupiter helped preserve solids in the region we now call the habitable zone, Baibhav Srivastava, a graduate student in planetary science at Rice University in Houston and the paper\u2019s lead author, tells me via email. <\/p>\n
Our results suggest that the timing of Jupiter’s formation was crucial for keeping Earth’s ingredients at the optimal location, where they could combine and grow, Srivastava tells me. In that sense, Jupiter’s early formation may have been one of the key factors that made a life-bearing planet like Earth possible, he says.<\/p>\n
Rocky Planet Formation<\/p>\n
Jupiter\u2019s early growth reshaped the solar system’s evolution and set the stage for the formation of rocky planets, says Srivastava. While terrestrial planets themselves took tens to hundreds of millions of years to reach their final sizes, their building blocks (planetary embryos) formed within the first few million years, he says. <\/p>\n
In a gas-rich planetary disk, the building blocks of the terrestrial planets would otherwise have spiraled inward and been lost because of the effects that the gas exerts on the objects, says Srivastava. But Jupiter\u2019s presence and its induced \u201cbumps on the road\u201d prevented that from happening, he says. <\/p>\n
How Did It Work?<\/p>\n
Jupiter\u2019s immense gravity sent ripples through the newborn solar system\u2019s disk, creating \u201ccosmic traffic jams\u201d that prevented small particles from spiraling into the Sun, Rice University notes. Instead, these particles collected into dense bands where they could clump together into planetesimals \u2014 the rocky seeds of planets, says the university.<\/p>\n
As Jupiter grew\u2014around 1.5 million years after the solar system\u2019s birth\u2014it opened a deep gap in the solar nebula, disrupting the inward flow of pebbles and dust, says Srivastava. This barrier delayed the supply of solid material to the inner solar system, he says.<\/p>\n
What does all this tell us about our place in the galaxy?<\/p>\n
By depleting the gas from the inner Solar System, Jupiter created the conditions that allowed rocky planets to form and remain in orbits relatively farther from the Sun, unlike the compact, close-in “super-Earths” that we often see in other planetary systems, says Srivastava. <\/p>\n
A Unique Solar System? <\/p>\n
If Jupiter had formed much later, after about 2 million years, the growing planets would have spiraled inward toward the Sun, resulting in a system of close-in super-Earths rather than relatively widely spaced terrestrial planets, says Srivastava. <\/p>\n
As for planetary systems without such Jupiter-like planets?<\/p>\n
Planetary systems that lack an early-forming Jupiter, or that have a giant planet that forms too late, may still form rocky planets, says Srivastava. But those planets are likely to be larger, hotter, and orbit much closer to their stars than those in our Solar System, he says. <\/p>\n
The Bottom Line?<\/p>\n
Jupiter didn\u2019t just become the biggest planet \u2014 it set the architecture for the whole inner solar system, Rice University planetary scientist Andre Izidoro, the paper\u2019s second author, says in a statement. Without it, we might not have Earth as we know it, he says.<\/p>\n