Jupiter may have swept through the early solar system like a wrecking ball, destroying any newly-formed super-Earths by driving them into the Sun, a new study has found. The findings suggest that a second generation of inner planets, including Earth and Mars, would then have formed from the depleted material that was left behind.
The study also explains why the terrestrial planets in our solar system have such relatively low masses compared to the planets orbiting other Sun-like stars. “Our work suggests that Jupiter’s inward-outward migration could have destroyed a first generation of planets and set the stage for the formation of the mass-depleted terrestrial planets that our solar system has today,” said Konstantin Batygin, assistant professor of planetary science at California Institute of Technology.
About half of Sun-like stars in our galactic neighbourhood have orbiting planets. In our solar system, very little lies within Mercury’s orbit; there is only a little debris — probably near-Earth asteroids that moved further inward - but certainly no planets.