Study Reveals How an Alien Cosmic Visitor Could Have Transformed Our Solar System

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Study Reveals How an Alien Cosmic Visitor Could Have Transformed Our Solar System

Researchers recently suggested that a giant object from outside our solar system, possibly eight times the mass of Jupiter, may have changed the orbits of our planets. This idea was shared in a study, though it’s still awaiting peer review. The study is accessible on the arXiv preprint database.

Scientists have long believed that, under perfect conditions, the planets should orbit the Sun in neat circles, arranged in the same plane. In reality, they move through three-dimensional space, making a straight line view nearly impossible.

To explore why the orbits appear irregular, researchers imagined a scenario from around four billion years ago when a star-sized object zoomed through our solar system. They ran over 50,000 simulations, each covering 20 million years, tweaking different factors like the object’s mass and speed.

Their results showed that in about 1% of the simulations, this cosmic visitor could have altered the planets’ orbits to look like what we see today. They concluded, “There’s about a 1-in-100 chance that such a flyby produces a solar system layout like ours.”

The findings indicate that the interstellar object might have passed within 1.69 astronomical units (AU) of the Sun, just beyond Mars’ orbit. One astronomical unit is the distance from the Earth to the Sun. This close approach could have pulled the planets into new trajectories.

According to the researchers, this chance encounter with a foreign object may explain the unusual shapes and tilts of the planets’ orbits. Previous ideas suggested that the orbits were affected by interactions between the planets themselves. However, this new research opens up the possibility that a single event could account for these differences.

The scientists also emphasized the need for more research. They plan to study how such cosmic events might influence smaller bodies, like asteroids, in the asteroid belt and beyond.



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Solar system,Sun,Planet orbits,Interstellar guest,Science