An international team of scientists used a mathematical model describing the evolution of the solar system to determine where Jupiter and Saturn were originally located. The discovery complements our understanding of the unusual structure of the solar system. The research is published in the journal Icarus.
The young solar system was surrounded by a rotating disk of gas and dust, from which planets were subsequently formed. Initially, the orbits of the newborn planets were thought to be circular and close to each other, and the gravitational interaction caused them to move rapidly, creating the structure that we see today. An international team of scientists modeled 6,000 simulations of the development of the solar system and revealed the original location of Jupiter and Saturn.
“Now that we know that there are thousands of planetary systems in the Milky Way galaxy alone, the arrangement of the planets in our solar system seems very unusual,” said Matthew Clement, project manager at the Cargnegie Institute. - We used reverse engineering models and reproduced the processes of its formation. It's a bit like trying to figure out what happened in a car accident after the accident, you need to understand how fast the cars were moving, in which direction, and so on."
Previously, it was believed that during the first time of its existence, Jupiter managed to orbit the Sun three times in the time that Saturn spent two revolutions. However, new research has shown that two revolutions of Jupiter corresponded to one revolution of Saturn.
The model also showed that the location of Uranus and Neptune is due to the Kuiper Belt, an area at the edge of the solar system made up of asteroids and dwarf planets, the largest of which is Pluto. Now that astronomers are convinced of the effectiveness of the new model, it can be used to study the formation of terrestrial planets, and, possibly, try to look for similar systems in the Universe.