A terrestrial planet hovering between Mars and Jupiter would be able to push Earth out of the solar system and wipe out life on this planet, according to a UC Riverside experiment.
© NASA/JPL/ASU
UCR astrophysicist Stephen Kane explained that his experiment was meant to address two notable gaps in planetary science.
The first is the gap in our solar system between the size of terrestrial and giant gas planets. The largest terrestrial planet is Earth, and the smallest gas giant is Neptune, which is four times wider and 17 times more massive than Earth. There is nothing in between.
© alexaldo/iStock/GettySize comparison of the planets.
"In other star systems there are many planets with masses in that gap. We call them super-Earths," Kane said.
The other gap is in location, relative to the sun, between Mars and Jupiter. "Planetary scientists often wish there was something in between those two planets. It seems like wasted real estate," he said.
These gaps could offer important insights into the architecture of our solar system, and into Earth's evolution. To fill them in, Kane ran dynamic computer simulations of a planet between Mars and Jupiter with a range of different masses, and then observed the effects on the orbits of all other planets.
The results,
published in the
Planetary Science Journal, were mostly disastrous for the solar system. "This fictional planet gives a
nudge to Jupiter that is just enough to destabilize everything else," Kane said. "Despite many astronomers having wished for this extra planet, it's a good thing we don't have it."
© NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/Tim PyleArtist's concept of Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-size planet orbiting a star smaller and cooler than the sun, about 1,200 light-years from Earth.
Jupiter is much larger than all the other planets combined; its mass is 318 times that of Earth, so its gravitational influence is profound. If a super-Earth in our solar system, a passing star, or any other celestial object disturbed Jupiter even slightly, all other planets would be profoundly affected.
Depending on the mass and exact location of a super-Earth, its presence could ultimately eject Mercury and Venus as well as Earth from the solar system. It could also destabilize the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, tossing them into outer space as well.
The super-Earth would change the shape of this Earth's orbit, making it far less habitable than it is today, if not ending life entirely.
If Kane made the planet's mass smaller and put it directly in between Mars and Jupiter, he saw it was possible for the planet to remain stable for a long period of time. But small moves in any direction and, "things would go poorly," he said.
The study has implications for the ability of planets in other solar systems to host life. Though Jupiter-like planets, gas giants far from their stars, are only found in about 10% of the time, their presence could decide whether neighboring Earths or super-Earths have stable orbits.
These results gave Kane a renewed respect for the delicate order that holds the planets together around the sun. "Our solar system is more finely tuned than I appreciated before. It all works like intricate clock gears. Throw more gears into the mix and it all breaks," Kane said.
Reader Comments
Tiamat was destroyed in a collision.
Tiamat was an enormous terrestrial planet, that broke apart forming the debris field between jupiter and mars.
Mars has scarring fom the impacts received from ths collision
The largest piece of Tiamat is what makes up Hercolobus, the Comet Planet (or planet X) whose orbit takes it halfway to Alpha Centari, and around our suns binary ( a red dwarf star)
Mercury is rumored to be the hardened ,exposed core from Tiamat.
Earth, when drained of all water, would resemble an apple with the bottom half eaten. It has also been theorized that the earth, its waters and its moon are remnants of Tiamat also.
Or, No
Except that current theories say earths binary star ( nemesis) has in tow with it 4-9 planets. One of these is rumored to be nibiru. Either way it was our binaries trip through our system that destroyed Tiamat.
Both venus an uranus are spinning against their obital direction.
Hercolobus was cast off after the collision at its current orbit, perpendicular to the plane of our planets orbits. Imo
Planet x is orbiting at 70ยฐ off our orbital plane around Sol.
The Nemisis (red) and its "sister" nibiru (blue) travel together. For an interesting description, look up the hopi indians version of this
Again , this is my understanding after surfacing from the infinite rabbit holes regarding these topics and being an backyard astronomer
However using other hisorical records we know of Sols binary Nemesis ( Wormwood from revelations 10-12, Baal to the sumerians, the "sisters" in first peoples lore)
Lol, even mastercards logo is sol merging with nemesis
Can you imagine what we could study, learn, do, if it were not for the human garbage trying to rule this planet. They are so damn immature and they impose that fucked up mentality all over.
You're all wrong, the earth is flat !
The idea of currently undetectable bodies having crashed through our solar system and disrupted things mightily somehow fails to give most of them any reason to look at Earth, Mars, Saturn, and Neptune all sharing the same axial tilt of 20-some degrees, with no other "planets" likewise.
Still poking around in the dark, and still following the "millions and billions of years ago" explanations.
Our sun is fed by this elecricity from larger stars an them from the galactic core.
Oersted i believe, was one of the first to state and prove this. Happening on earth