Giant planets ran amok soon after Solar System’s birth

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Meteorites suggest cataclysmic “instability” occurred around the time of the Moon’s formation

In its youth, the Solar System underwent a momentous upheaval: Gravitational tugs between the giant planets threw them off-track, causing Jupiter’s orbit to jump closer to the Sun, while Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune were flung outward. The gravity of the rampaging giants scattered Pluto and other icy bodies to the Kuiper belt, shepherded the asteroid belt into its current location, and sent countless bodies crashing into the inner Solar System.

Dating the event is not simply a bookkeeping exercise. The chaos would have influenced the size, location, and composition of the rocky planets, and many researchers believe it could also explain why a Mars-size protoplanet crashed into Earth around this time, creating the Moon. “If we can pin down the when, then we can say something about the why,” says Graham Edwards, a cosmochemist at Dartmouth University.

 

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