Friday, November 18, 2011

Extra Giant Planet May Have Dwelled in Our Solar System

Scientists are starting to put a few pieces of the puzzle together about how the solar system works, but they are not yet ready to make the big leap into the fact that all planets were born and spit out of the sun into the solar system, and beyond. lol


Within our solar system, an extra giant planet, or possibly two, might once have accompanied Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.

Computer models showing how our solar system formed suggested the planets once gravitationally slung one another across space, only settling into their current orbits over the course of billions of years.

During more than 6,000 simulations of this planetary scattering phase, planetary scientist David Nesvorny at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., found that a solar system that began with four giant planets only had a 2.5 percent chance of leading to the orbits presently seen now. These systems would be too violent in their youth to end up resembling ours, most likely resulting in systems that have less than four giants over time, Nesvorny found.

Instead, a model about 10 times more likely at matching our current solar system began with five giants, including a now lost world comparable in mass to Uranus and Neptune. This extra planet may have been an "ice giant" rich in icy matter just like Uranus and Neptune, Nesvorny explained.

The computer model allowed Nesvorny to create a video of the potential extra planet's departure from our solar system.

When the solar system was about 600 million years old, it underwent a major period of instability that scattered the giant planets and smaller worlds, researchers said. Eventually, gravitational encounters with Jupiter would have flung the mystery world to interstellar space about 4 billion years ago.

As fantastic as these findings might sound, a large number of free-floating worlds have recently been discovered in interstellar space, Nesvorny noted. As such, the ejection of planets from solar systems might be common.

"The work raises interesting questions about the early history of the outer solar system," Nesvorny told "For example, traditionally, most research was focused on the giant planets, their satellites, Kuiper belt objects, and their interaction — that's what we have in the outer solar system now. But how about Mars to super-Earth-size bodies? Have such objects formed on the outer solar system and were eliminated later? If not, then why?"

"This is just a beginning," Nesvorny said. "It will need quite a lot of work to see if there actually was the fifth planet. I am not fully convinced myself."

Nesvorny's research is detailed online in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.


  1. The scientist that puts up his/her paycheck to make that leap will be in-famous!

    Hmm, maybe you could do the peer review Lou! LOL!

  2. Hey Lou, good to see you back. I have read stories of the planets" battling each other" in the ancient past. This must be where that concept comes from?


  3. Hi Chris, I bet they would love being peered to a ufo nut.

  4. Hi hoss, I think the scientists are coming from some other angle, an angle that will not jeopardize their paychecks.

  5. Hi Lou,

    I to have believed for many years that the solar system was originated the way they told us because it all did look so very logical to me, but that stopped immediately after I saw your eye opening thread about it on ATS.

    I never would have thought about that possibility of which I immediately realized as a “non scientist” :lol: that it is in fact an outstanding theory.

    And that Dark Fireworks on the Sun NASA video from June 7, 2011 did show in fact how very realistic that theory is.

    Because I don’t expect that it will be you that despite you would deserve it will receive the Nobel prize for that marvelous theory which when it eventually will see the light of day out will no doubt will have an earthshaking effect on the whole scientific community and of course the whole world, you and I may perhaps live long enough to see which scientist will then come forward in time with then “his” exactly the same theory and therefore will receive the Nobel prize for it how undeserved that then would be.



  6. Hi space,

    That is the way of this paradoxical world. lol

  7. Hi Lou, thanks for answering my friends question about me . I understand what you said and I am comfortable with the answer that you gave her.

    Its good to know" here" is OK!


  8. Hey Lou, how come you took down the family story?
    I did not get a chance to finish reading it . Is there another place I can go to finish reading it ?


  9. You can read it at my other message board: