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The researchers uncovered evidence that there was once another ice giant like Neptune that was located between Saturn and Uranus at the edge of the solar system. This would mean that there may have been nine planets in the solar system, or 10 if you include Pluto before it was downgraded to a dwarf planet in 2008.
The Sun was once surrounded by a disk of gas, dust and rocks.
Over the course of billions of years, the debris collected to give us the planets we know today.
However, the more massive planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, have played the gravitational tug of war, giving way to the order of the solar system.
Now, researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science have run more than 6,000 computer simulations to show what the solar system looked like before the planets took position.
Carnegie postdoctoral fellow Matt Clement said, “We now know that there are thousands of planetary systems in our own galaxy alone, the Milky Way.
“But it turns out that the arrangement of the planets in our Solar System is very unusual, so we are using models to decode and replicate its formative processes.
“It’s kind of like trying to figure out what happened in a car accident after the fact: how fast the cars were going, in which directions and so on.”
Through their simulations, the team found that the final arrangement of Uranus and Neptune, the two planets on the outer edge of the solar system, was determined by the Kuiper belt, a circumstellar disk of planetary debris and comets.
The research also showed that the Kuiper Belt helped “eject an ice giant” that was ejected when the solar system was still forming.
Not only did the team help uncover a potential lost world, but the search could be used to search for life on other planets.
Dr Clement continued: “This indicates that although our Solar System is a bit strange, it hasn’t always been this way.
“Furthermore, now that we have established the effectiveness of this model, we can use it to help us observe the formation of terrestrial planets, including our own, and perhaps to inform our ability to look elsewhere for similar systems that may have the potential to host the planet. life. “
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