An Interstellar Visitor May Have Shaped the Orbits in Our Solar System
The orbits of the planets around the Sun have been a subject of intense scientific debate. Scientists understand planetary properties well, but their trajectories have changed significantly since the Solar System’s formation.
Planetary Migration
A widely accepted theory suggests gravitational interactions caused young planets to migrate closer to or farther from their original positions.
Now, a new theory proposes that an object with a mass between 2 and 50 times that of Jupiter may have passed through the Solar System and triggered these changes.
The evolution of planetary orbits is a complex process. Initially, planets formed from a rotating disk of gas and dust surrounding the young Sun. The conservation of angular momentum caused this material to organize into a plane, leading to circular and aligned orbits.
Orbital Migrations and Gravitational Influences
As planets grew, interactions with the protoplanetary disk led to orbital migrations, shifting the planets closer to or farther from the Sun. Gravitational interactions also altered the eccentricity and inclination of the orbits, occasionally ejecting protoplanets from the Solar System. Tidal forces from the Sun may have further influenced these changes.
Protoplanet ejections were common during the Solar System’s formation, but interstellar objects rarely visited.These visitors provide a unique opportunity to understand distant planetary systems.
One notable example is ‘Oumuamua, discovered in 2017 as the first confirmed interstellar object. With its elongated shape and unusual acceleration—likely caused by outgassing or other non-gravitational forces—it offered new insights.
A recent study led by Garett Brown from the University of Toronto suggests that a massive interstellar visitor may have significantly influenced the orbits of the gas giants. The authors argue that current theories do not fully explain the observed eccentricities in these planets.
The Role of a Massive Intruder
The study shows that an object with a mass between 2 and 50 times that of Jupiter, passing through the Solar System with a minimum distance of 20 astronomical units from the Sun and a hyperbolic velocity below 6 km/s, could account for these characteristics.
The team’s calculations indicate a 1 in 100 chance that an interstellar visitor caused the orbits we see today, a probability much higher than other theories offer. Based on simulations and approximate parameters for this object, the researchers concluded that this hypothesis is the most plausible to date.
Read the original article on: Science Alert
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