Hey there and welcome to Life Noggin!
Our solar system is pretty weird.
Over the past few decades, scientists have discovered and confirmed over one thousand
exoplanets, which are planets that orbit other stars.
And those star systems have quite a few differences from this one.
See, most solar systems have their larger planets orbit their host star closer than
Mercury orbits the Sun.
In fact, in 1995, the exoplanet 51 Pegasi b was discovered, which has half the mass
of Jupiter but is 20 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun.
These types of exoplanets, which are creatively called “Hot Jupiters”, are quite common
in other solar systems, but weirdly, they are missing from ours.
So why are our largest planets so far away from the Sun?
Well, to be honest, scientists aren’t quite sure...BUT, that hasn’t stopped them from
coming up with hypotheses.
And this is where the Wandering Jupiter idea comes in.
Some scientists believe that when our solar system was a little youngin, the Sun was potentially
surrounded by super-Earth rocky planets.
But then our good friend Jupiter moved inward, whose gravitational pull changed the orbits
of these planets, causing them to collide with one another and, ya know, smashed them
into pieces, some of which were hurtled into the sun.
However, as Jupiter later retreated, being pulled away from the Sun by the formation
of Saturn, any leftover debris eventually formed into the rocky planets we know today:
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
And this does a good job of explaining why the inner planets are younger than the outer
gas giants.
So, essentially, if this is actually what happened, if it weren’t for Jupiter, life
on Earth would not exist.
Now, that’s not saying that life wouldn’t be possible at all, but Earth may not have
ever formed if Jupiter hadn’t come in and destroyed what was here before.
And not only is Jupiter potentially responsible for allowing Earth to form in the first place,
but it also helps protect you now.
See, in the last decade alone, Jupiter has been hit by at least five comets or asteroids.
In fact, recent images from March 17th, 2016 show that Jupiter was hit by a small object*.
And these impacts are just the ones we’ve seen…some scientists predict that these
collisions probably happen once to five times every month.
And if it weren’t for Jupiter’s huge gravitational force deflecting these objects away from Earth,
you humans may have been struck by them instead.
BUT, there’re also the theory that Jupiter *might* steer space rocks our way, possibly
causing impact events -- so it might still be a little bit evil.
.
So let’s all be grateful that Jupiter exists.
I mean, if it didn’t, you probably wouldn’t be here watching this video, and that would
be pretty sad, ya know?
On the topic of hypothetical questions, what if Earth doubled in size?
Check out this video.
There’s also a link in the description if you’re on mobile.
Make sure you come back every Monday for a brand new video.
As always, I’m Blocko and this has been Life Noggin.
Don’t forget to keep on thinking!