An Mysterious Planet May Have Approached the Sun in Its Early Days, Restructuring the Solar System.
According to a new study led by Dr. Garett Brown from the University of Toronto (Canada), in addition to the current eight planets, there may have been another planet in the solar system that was between 2 to 50 times the size of Jupiter.
However, this giant did not form from the Sun’s protoplanetary disk; instead, it is considered an invader.
An invading planet may have approached the Sun at a distance just slightly farther than Uranus – (AI Illustration: Thu Anh).
According to Science Alert, Dr. Brown and his colleagues investigated how a planet visiting the solar system in the past could have shaped the orbits of present-day celestial bodies, including Earth.
Calculations indicate that the probability of this scenario is up to 1 in 100, a significant ratio considering the potential impact it could have.
Using simulations, they estimated the colossal size of this visitor and demonstrated that it approached the Sun at a very close distance of up to 20 astronomical units (AU), which is just beyond the orbit of Uranus.
One AU is equivalent to the distance from the Sun to Earth, and Uranus is about 19 AU away from the Sun.
For celestial bodies not within the same star system, passing by at only 20 AU is considered very close.
The idea behind this research stems from efforts to study the orbital evolution of planets in the solar system, which still has many gaps.
The evolution of planetary orbits is a complex process, with each planet today no longer residing on its original orbit.
Among them, Jupiter and its migration are believed to have the most significant impact on shaping the orbits of present-day planets. However, this cannot fully explain the complexity and differences in the orbits of the remaining seven planets.
The aforementioned giant invading planet has provided an additional piece of the puzzle, filling some of these gaps.
Moreover, these findings help us understand more about strange visitors that may enter the solar system.
Thanks to modern observational techniques, in recent years, humans have captured several unusual visitors from interstellar space, although they have only been asteroids so far.
Among them, the most famous is Oumuamua, an asteroid with a cigar shape and peculiar orbit, which some scientists from Harvard University (USA) suspect may be related to alien technology.
