Author: Robby Berman / Source: Big Think
- Astronomers have wondered how a gas giant like Jupiter could sit in the middle of our solar system’s planets.
- Also unexplained has been the pair of asteroid clusters in front of and behind Jupiter in its orbit.
- Putting the two questions together revealed the answer to both.
Jupiter’s long been a puzzler to astronomers. Planet formation theory holds that a gas giant forms far away from its star then moves inward over time until it’s in a tight orbit around the sun. Jupiter, though, sits right in the middle of our solar system’s planets, between Mars and Saturn. And that’s not all that’s odd: There’s an unexpectedly asymmetrical pair of asteroid clusters — known as the Trojan asteroids — preceding and trailing Jupiter in its orbit. The group in front is 50% larger than the one in back. The most widely accepted idea was that Jupiter formed near the Sun and moved outwards.
That’s now been turned on its head by a team of scientists from Lund University who ran a series of models to try to identify a plausible origin story for Jupiter. They discovered that the planet and its clusters would be where they are under only one scenario: Jupiter forming way out near Uranus — as gas giants are supposed to do, after all — and moving slowly toward the Sun, attracting and accreting the asteroids that now form its core, with the leftovers trailing behind. Lead author Simona Pirani says, “This is the first time we have proof…
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