YOUNG SOLAR SYSTEM's FIFTH GIANT PLANET?

By D. Nesvorný. 2011

139 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Studies of solar system formation suggest that the solar system's giant planets formed and migrated in the protoplanetary disk to reach the resonant orbits with all planets inside ∼15 AU from the Sun. After the gas disk's dispersal, Uranus and Neptune were likely scattered by the gas giants, and approached their current orbits while dispersing the transplanetary disk of planetesimals, whose remains survived to this time in the region known as the Kuiper Belt. Here we performed N-body integrations of the scattering phase between giant planets in an attempt to determine which initial states are plausible. We found that the dynamical simulations starting with a resonant system of four giant planets have a low success rate in matching the present orbits of giant planets and various other constraints (e.g., survival of the terrestrial planets). The dynamical evolution is typically too violent, if Jupiter and Saturn start in the 3:2 resonance, and leads to final systems with fewer than four planets. Several initial states stand out in that they show a relatively large likelihood of success in matching the constraints. Some of the statistically best results were obtained when assuming that the solar system initially had five giant planets and one ice giant, with the mass comparable to that of Uranus and Neptune, and which was ejected to interstellar space by Jupiter. This possibility appears to be conceivable in view of the recent discovery of a large number of free-floating planets in interstellar space, which indicates that planet ejection should be common.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8b5dd7b7e3124c3e2c2dc7bb72c7383bfaef020a

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

The planet nine hypothesis (2019, background): “…with a strikingly dynamic evolution model, wherein the giant planets are envisioned to have formed closer to the sun and subsequently scattered onto their current orbits during a transient period of instability (Malhotra, 1995; Tsiganis et al., 2005; Batygin & Brown, 2010; Nesvorný, 2011, 2015a).”
Origin and Evolution of Short-period Comets (2017, background): “It seems to us, for example, that P9 cannot be related to the hypothesized fifth giant planet (Nesvorný 2011, Batygin et al. 2012, NM12).”
CAPTURE OF TROJANS BY JUMPING JUPITER (2013, background): “…NM12 showed that various constraints (such as the final orbits of outer planets, survival of the terrestrial planets, etc.) can most easily be satisfied when the system starts with five initial planets and one ice giant is ejected during the instability (Nesvorný 2011, Batygin et al. 2012).”
EVIDENCE FOR SLOW MIGRATION OF NEPTUNE FROM THE INCLINATION DISTRIBUTION OF KUIPER BELT OBJECTS (2015, background): “A new model of planetary instability has recently been proposed (Nesvorný 2011; Batygin et al. 2012; NM12).”
Dynamics of pebbles in the vicinity of a growing planetary embryo: hydro-dynamical simulations (2012, background): “…for which only a small number (4−6) of giant planet cores should grow in the disk, as suggested by the number of giant planets of our solar system, including rogue ice-giants potentially lost during the dynamical evolution that followed planet formation (Nesvorny 2011; Nesvorny & Morbidelli 2012).”
STATISTICAL STUDY OF THE EARLY SOLAR SYSTEM'S INSTABILITY WITH FOUR, FIVE, AND SIX GIANT PLANETS (2012, methodology): “Following Nesvorný (2011) and Batygin et al. (2012) we considered the case with five giant planets as an interesting solution to some of the problems discussed in the previous section.”