Simulations Reveal that Rocky Super-Earths are Often Protected by a Jupiter-Like Planet
Phoenix666 writes:
An international group of astronomers, led by Martin Schlecker of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, has found that the arrangement of rocky, gaseous and icy planets in planetary systems is apparently not random and depends on only a few initial conditions. The study, which will appear in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, is based on a new simulation that tracks the evolution of planetary systems over several billion years. Planetary systems around sun-like stars, which produce in their inner regions super-Earths with low water and gas content, very often form a planet comparable to our Jupiter on an outer orbit. Such planets help to keep potentially dangerous objects away from the inner regions.
Scientists suspect that the planet Jupiter played an important role in the development of life on Earth, because its gravity often deflects potentially dangerous asteroids and comets on their orbits into the zone of rocky planets in a way that reduces the number of catastrophic collisions. This circumstance therefore repeatedly raises the question whether such a combination of planets is rather random, or whether it is a common result of the formation of planetary systems.
Jupiter-like planets deflect asteroids, comets, and other hazardous objects from planets nearer their stars.
Journal Reference:
M. Schlecker, C. Mordasini, A. Emsenhuber, et al. The New Generation Planetary Population Synthesis (NGPPS). III. Warm super-Earths and cold Jupiters: A weak occurrence correlation, but with a strong architecture-composition link [open], Astronomy & Astrophysics (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202038554)
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