Jupiter Bumped Giant Planet Out of Solar System 4 Billion Years Ago-like an interplanetary chess game

Astrophysicists at the University of Toronto have found that a close encounter with Jupiter about four billion years ago may have resulted in another planet's ejection from the Solar System altogether.

This is Jupiter's Great Red Spot in 2000 as seen by NASA's Cassini orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft snapped this image of Jupiter and its moon Io when the two crossed paths in 2008. Astronomers say Jupiter could have ejected another planet from our solar system without losing its moons.

NASA/JHU-APL/Southwest Research Institute

The existence of a fifth giant gas planet at the time of the Solar System's formation -- in addition to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune that we know of today -- was first proposed in 2011. But if it did exist, how did it get pushed out?

For years, scientists have suspected the ouster was either Saturn or Jupiter.

Planet ejection occurs as a result of a close planetary encounter in which one of the objects accelerates so much that it breaks free from the massive gravitational pull of the Sun.

Cloutier and his colleagues turned their attention to moons and orbits, developing computer simulations based on the modern-day trajectories of Callisto and Iapetus, the regular moons orbiting around Jupiter and Saturn respectively.They then measured the likelihood of each one producing its current orbit in the event that its host planet was responsible for ejecting the hypothetical planet, an incident which would have caused significant disturbance to each moon's original orbit.

"Ultimately,found that Jupiter is capable of ejecting the fifth giant planet while retaining a moon with the orbit of Callisto.""On the other hand, it would have been very difficult for Saturn to do so because Iapetus would have been excessively unsettled, resulting in an orbit that is difficult to reconcile with its current trajectory." 


FRIENDS!!!It's like something out of an interplanetary chess game. Astrophysicists at the University of Toronto have found that a close encounter with Jupiter about four billion years ago may have resulted in another planet's ejection from the Solar System altogether.

http://www.ndtv.com/world-news
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2015/10
http://phys.org/news/2015-10-astrophysicists-jupiter-giant-planet-solar.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151029093627.htm