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Jupiter might have shaped the Solar System on its grand tack. In planetary astronomy, the grand tack hypothesis proposes that Jupiter formed at a distance of 3.5 AU from the Sun, then migrated inward to 1.5 AU, before reversing course due to capturing Saturn in an orbital resonance, eventually halting near its current orbit at 5.2 AU.
Planetary habitability in the Solar System is the study that searches the possible existence of past or present extraterrestrial life in those celestial bodies. As exoplanets are too far away and can only be studied by indirect means, the celestial bodies in the Solar System allow for a much more detailed study: direct telescope observation, space probes, rovers and even human spaceflight.
Any intelligent civilization which becomes spacefaring could eventually extinguish any safe orbits via Kessler syndrome, trapping itself within its home planet. [29] Such a result could happen even with robust space pollution controls, as a lone malicious actor on a planet could cause a Kessler syndrome scenario. [30]
The jumping-Jupiter scenario specifies an evolution of giant-planet migration described by the Nice model, in which an ice giant (an additional Neptune-mass planet) is scattered inward by Saturn and then ejected by Jupiter, causing their semi-major axes to jump, and thereby quickly separating their orbits. [1]
In modern times, numerous impact events on Jupiter have been observed, the most significant of which was the collision of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 in 1994. Jupiter is the most massive planet in the Solar System and thus has a vast sphere of gravitational influence, the region of space where an asteroid capture can take place under favorable ...
The planet Mercury is especially susceptible to Jupiter's influence because of a small celestial coincidence: Mercury's perihelion, the point where it gets closest to the Sun, precesses at a rate of about 1.5 degrees every 1,000 years, and Jupiter's perihelion precesses only a little slower. At one point, the two may fall into sync, at which ...
Jupiter was the first of the Sun's planets to form, and its inward migration during the primordial phase of the Solar System affected much of the formation history of the other planets. Jupiter's atmosphere consists of 76% hydrogen and 24% helium by mass, with a denser interior.
The Fifth Giant is a hypothetical fifth giant planet originally in an orbit between Saturn and Uranus but was ejected from the Solar System into interstellar space after a close encounter with Jupiter, resulting in a rapid divergence of Jupiter's and Saturn's orbit which may have ensured the orbital stability of the terrestrial planets in the ...