Breaking News - Scientists Now Know Jupiter's Origins

Using very advanced computer simulations, researchers believe they have uncovered the origins of our solar systems largest planet, Jupiter, whose location and size as well as the distribution of its Trojan asteroids, which share the planet’s orbit, have long puzzled scientists.

Approximately 4.5 billion years ago, when the planets were forming, Jupiter began as an icy asteroid about 18 astronomical units, or 1.7 billion miles, from the sun. Over the course of 700,000 years, it gradually spiralled in to it’s current orbital distance, picking up size as it went by accreting matter and then accreting gas once it was in a fixed orbit until it came to be the gas giant we recognise today.

In its travels it also picked up the Trojan asteroids, which now orbit 60 degrees ahead of and behind Jupiter. But what is most interesting about the asteroids is that there are about 50% more asteroids in the leading group. This is what led to the discovery of how Jupiter formed.

If it had formed at its current distance from the sun, the distribution of the Trojans would have been roughly equal. Only if it had formed much further away and traveled inward would the distribution be as it is due to the effects of gravity. The simulations run by researchers have shown this to be the case.

NASA plans to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids much more closely with a probe named Lucy which it hopes to launch in October of 2021. The probe’s name Lucy comes from the skeleton discovered by anthropologists in Ethiopia in 1974 and not the Peanuts cartoon character.
~Eric Fischer 26 March, 2019


To read more, visit:

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/arti...

https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/...

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/...