Jupiter is already a large solar system Kahuna, an absolute unit of the planet with a mass of 2.5 times higher than the rest of the planets.
Then prepare your mind – the largest planet of the solar system was once even bigger. New calculations show that the early Jupiter could have 2.5 times more than 2.5 times today, says astronomers Konstantin Batygin of Caltech and Fred Adams from the University of Michigan.
Based on their studies with two of Jupiter’s moon, scientists found that Jupiter was 2 to 2.5 times the current volume of the first solid materials formed in the solar system, with a magnetic field of which was significantly more powerful.
This is the conclusion that supports the formation of giant gas worlds from bottom to top.
Jupiter’s illustration showing magnetic field lines. (K. Bataigin)
“Our main goal is to understand where we come from, and to solve the puzzle, it is necessary to set up the early stages of the planet,” says Batygin. “It brings us closer to the understanding of how not only Jupiter, but also the entire solar system formed.”
We believe that rocky worlds such as mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are made up of the bottom up, the gradual accumulation of dust and rock to eventually create the whole world, with differentiated core and everything else. This is known as the main stone.
It is believed that gas giants start in the same way, but when they reach a certain mass, about 10 times the mass of the Earth, they have enough gravity to maintain a large gas shell and begin to accumulate. It is believed that this process occurred in the external solar system because of the lack of material closer to the sun to accumulate a large core.
Because the formation and development of Jupiter is believed to have played a key role in the formation of solar system architecture, detailed information on how it was born and how it grew is very interested in planets scientists. Since we can’t just, you know, unscrew the solar system, we need to look at what is happening now to try to reconstruct the past.
This usually includes the standard planetary formation patterns collected by observing the planets’ systems (including our own) throughout the bird trail, and modeling according to those observations. However, these models include a lot of guesses and points, so they tend to leave great uncertainty.
Batygin and Adams took a different approach: they studied the orbital amalthea and thebe, the two tiny Jovian moons that approach the planet orbit, even closer than the orbit. The orbits of these tiny moons are tilted against Jupiter’s equator.
Previous work has shown that these tilts can be used to repel the history of orbit of these tiny moon. Batygin and Adams used this orbit history to reconstruct the early evolution of Jupiter.
“It is surprising that even 4.5 billion years later,” says Adams, “there are enough clues to reconstruct the physical condition of Jupiter at the dawn of its existence.”
Their results showed that Jupiter had a rapid, intense growth in the early history of the solar system. Just 3.8 million years after the first solid materials, Jupiter’s volume was at least twice the current volume.
In addition, its magnetic field was 50 times higher than it is now, facilitating the speed of accreditation from the material, fed from approximately 1.2 to 2.4 to 2.4 to Jupiter’s masses for a million years. This phase of rapid growth created the planet and allowed it to become a Jupiter we see today.
When the material around Jupiter finally dissipated, the planet itself shrunk by its severity, reducing its volume and increasing its speed. Jupiter continues to shrink so far as its surface and internal temperature fall, compressing and heating its core, and thus loses energy, although it occurs very slowly.
Even with a larger volume, Jupiter was never close to the massive enough to reach the star status. This should be at least 85 times the current mass to light the core hydrogen fusion, which is a feature of all stars.
What a team job gives us is a new means of understanding Jupiter and his role in the solar system, where he is believed to have played a vital role in stabilizing the planets so that life can occur on Earth.
“What we have founded here is a valuable benchmark,” says Batygin. “The point from which we can more confidently reconstruct the evolution of our solar system.”
The investigation has been published Nature astronomy;