Has Jupiter thrown another planet towards Earth?

The instability of the largest planet in the solar system indirectly caused the Earth to give birth to the Moon.

A team of scientists led by planetary scientists Chrysa Avdellidou from the University of Leicester (UK) and Kevin Walsh from the Southwest Research Institute (USA) have come up with a new model showing the special role of Jupiter. for the formation of today's Earth.

The research focuses on a theory called the "Nice Model" , which talks about the Solar System being extremely wild during the first few million years after its formation.

That is when the youngest planets of the star system we reside in are still running around, colliding, breaking up, and merging.

Jupiter was the first planet of the Solar System, which may have contributed to shaping several other planets including Earth - (Graphic image: NASA/FUSE/Lynette Cook).

They can be considered proto-planets, because their broken bodies have gradually gathered to form today's planets.

But there was one giant planet that was born earliest in the protoplanetary disk around the young Sun: Jupiter.

Some models have shown that early Jupiter was not in its current position, but moved around when it was born and may have influenced the formation of other planets. When did those things happen and how did they impact the Earth?

According to Space.com , the team focused on a type of meteorite called EL enstatite chondrite , which is low in iron and has a composition and isotopic ratio very similar to the material that formed Earth.

This tells scientists that Earth and EL chondrites likely condensed in the same part of the planet-forming disk .

However, EL's parent object appears to no longer be near Earth. Astronomical observations have connected these meteorites to the Athor family of asteroids, found quite far in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

EL's thermal history tells a rich story. Using dynamical simulations, the team modeled different scenarios involving Jupiter's migration and concluded that it was its migration that pulled EL's maternal fortunes away.

Models indicate that event must have occurred about 60-100 million years after the formation of the Solar System.

And that coincides with a hypothetical event that is increasingly proving to be true: A planet named Theia, as big as Mars, crashed into Earth.

The movement of Jupiter, causing chaos in the space closer to the Sun, may be the driving force that pushes Earth and Theia to move unstable, and then collide.

The collision caused both of these early planets to shatter, then over time gradually merged, becoming today's Earth.

Part of the body of both early planets broke off, wandering in Earth's orbit for a time before converging to form the Moon.

So, indirectly, it was Jupiter who threw Theia into Earth and caused the Moon to appear in the sky.

The research was recently presented at the European Geological Union General Assembly in Vienna - Austria and published in the journal Science.