Jumping Jupiter - Was a Giant Gas Planet Ejected From the Early Solar System?
The orbits of the giant planets were affected by a dynamical instability when the solar system was only about 600 million years old. As a result, the giant planets and smaller bodies scattered away from each other and in the process the early solar system may have ejected a giant gas planet according to scientists at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.
Comments:
My back of the envelope using 40 km/sec and 4 billion years elapsed time indicates this thing if it existed would be thousands of light years away. So I guess we won't be detecting it unless it didn't reach escape velocity. GN
I saw a tv program recently that said a gas giant may have impacted the sun early on. This is to explain excess lithium in the sun. Maybe the gas giant of this story isn't 1/2 a light year out cus it hit the sun. <br><br>I know, I know. This would have been likely to distrupt inferior planet orbits. But, maybe it was a steep trajectory and slipped through!<br><br> - cliff
<br>If this giant planet got kicked out of the Solar System but did not reach escape velocity, then there is a chance that it has assumed an orbit similar to that of a long period comet -- A period of say 100,000 to a million years.<br><br>If that is the case, then it may have zoomed by us thousands of times, but there would be no recorded human history or experience of its return to the inner Solar System.<br><br>And if it is out there today and far enough away from the Sun, there is a good chance that we would not be able to detect it even with our most powerful telescopes until it approaches the outer edges of our Solar System on its next return.<br><br>Can you imaging a "comet-like" planet the size of Neptune entering the inner Solar System at a speed of 160,000 miles per hour, whipping around the Sun, and then shooting out again into space?<br><br>Can you imagine all the space rocks, asteroids, parts of planets, and other junk that would gravitationally follow it into the inner Solar System?<br><br>I think we have either just invented a new "End of the World" scenario for a corny Sci-Fi movie... Or this may be the reason why Mercury and the Moon have hundreds of thousands of craters.<br><br><br>Guy Pirro<br><br><br><br><blockquote class="blockquote"><div class="italic"><i>Greg Nowell said:</i><br><br>My back of the envelope using 40 km/sec and 4 billion years elapsed time indicates this thing if it existed would be thousands of light years away. So I guess we won't be detecting it unless it didn't reach escape velocity. GN</div></blockquote>
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