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| Solar System |
Intro
Though, were there only eight Planets formed during the birth of our Solar System? Were there more Planets in our Solar System formed? According to our observations of other Solar systems, it would have seemed to us that there existed some more Planets, some giant ones and others the size of Mars. One Giant, which probably got kicked out from our Solar System.
What Happened to them and where are they now? Was there possibly a ghost Planet in our Solar System too? If yes, then where is it now? Why can’t we observe it currently? In today’s video, we are going to have a brief talk about the Ghost Planet, The lost Giant of our Solar System.
Formation of our Solar System and Planets
In the present-day world, most of us would assume that all the matter we see around us, from the massive Sun to the tiniest piece of rock, from Saturn’s beautiful ring to the white shiny moon, everything we see around us was formed 5 billion ago along with the formation of our Solar System in the Solar Nebula. You may not believe it, but the entire mass of our Solar System which we see around accounted for a mere 0.002% mass of the Solar Nebula.
The rest of the mass was blown away violently when our Sun came into existence. All the Planets that we see around us began to form about 4.6 billion years ago. Following the formation of the Sun, the matter situated away from the sun in the accretion disk also came together, creating clumps of rocks, which further underwent more collisions and came together to form Planets.
However, the planets which we see around us were not the only ones formed. They were the only ones who survived the events following the creation of these Planets. Giant gas planets, such as Jupiter, first assembled a solid core and then captured a massive atmosphere. The inner four Planets had a lot of molten rocky material available to them, unlike the gas giants.
Hence, These planets first formed a molten core which further collected more cosmic dust and materials to form a large Planetary mass. These Planets further underwent more collisions, ejecting debris into space.
This debris was utilized to create natural Satellites, like our moon, which was formed by a collision between our Earth and a Planet similar to Mars. Hence, only the best of Planets remained while the weak were destroyed. Some material which was left unused was further utilised to form other cosmological objects such as meteors, asteroids and comets. The universe also follows the principle of survival of the best. Cheers, and be proud of yourself, you’re one of the best in the Universe.
All the material which was left unused for further Planetary formation was thrown away into deep space. Some of this material was captured by the sun billions of miles from us, forming the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. At last, ten major planets and many other dwarfs and planets like Pluto remain standing, suffering through all the chaos of the universe.
With time, the planets stabilized themselves into a fixed orbit around the Sun. The period of stabilization continued for millions of years in several stages. So, what happened to all other Planets including our Giant Ninth Planet? As we discussed, the universe too follows the Sigma rule, Survival of the best.
Most of the Planets were destroyed via collisions with one another, ejecting a lot of material into outer space. Some of this material accumulated and formed a disk around the sun, which we now know as the Asteroid Belt. However, some Studies conducted by a bunch of brilliant minds amongst astronomers confirmed the existence of the Ghost Planet in our Solar System.
Introduction to the Lost Planet
In the year 2011, a team led by David Nesvorný, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute, ran a series of simulations while researching about the orbits of Planets in the early conditions of our Solar System. The research was centralized on the idea of the migration of planets from one stable orbit to another while interacting with nearby cosmic materials, which may increase or decrease the size of the orbit of a planet. The Solar System was not always as stable as we see it today.
During the unstable era of the Solar System, there was a gravitational tug-of-war going on between the five outer Giant Planets, including the Ghost Giant. This period of instability of the Solar System, was named as the Nice Model instability. We will discuss sometime later in future about the Nice Model instability theory, which is a whole different topic in itself. This theory shook the very foundations of theories on the Solar System, making astronomers wonder whether there existed a ninth planet, and also if Neptune and Uranus swapped their respective places in space, better to discuss this later on in future.
While running their simulations, the astronomers concluded their results by saying that there were five Outer Planets, not four of them as we see them now. After several failed attempts, they assumed the mass of the fifth Giant to be comparable to that of Uranus and its orbit was predicted to lie between Uranus and Neptune. Nesvorný also assumed some special conditions to match the end results with our present-day understanding of the Solar System.
- The orbits of the four giants were considered to resemble approximately that of their present-day orbits.
- The final Planetary calibration was predicted to have four Planets left.
- The third condition was based on the eccentric centers of the five Planets.
Eccentricity is a Mathematical term which defines how elliptical, or let us say, how ovoid the orbit of a Planet will be. According to the simulations, it seemed that the ejection of the Giant occurred approximately six hundred million years after the birth of the Solar System, that is, during the era of instability of our Solar System, much similar to our predictions.
Why was it tossed into deep space, far away from our home? Throughout the observations made by him, it was clear to Nesvorný that Jupiter and Saturn had the greatest roles to play in the ejection of the Fifth Giant from our Solar System.
To understand how this could happen, we need to know how gravitational kicking from one planet affects the other. We will discuss this term furthermore in this video, just be patient and believe in us. Now, moving back to the theory, Let us consider two cosmic bodies, in our case, we will consider one as Jupiter, and the other as Lost Giant.
During early times, when everything was in chaos, Jupiter Decided to have some fun. It moved somewhat away from its original orbit around the Sun and went around, wandering and kicking any material coming in its way. We don’t literally mean it was having fun, due to the presence of other Materials in our Solar Nebula, most of the objects were in chaos, changing their orbits, and many more. Jupiter was no exception to that. This caused Jupiter to interact with the Giant Planet. However, Jupiter wasn’t the only one interacting with the Giant Planet.
Other Celestial objects such as Saturn and Neptune were also responsible for kicking the giant Planet. For the sake of simplicity, let’s consider kicking as the violent interaction between two celestial bodies, during which they both try to retain their existing orbits, due to which the more massive Planet being more dominant, pushes the less dominant Planet further away in space for the sake of self stability, whenever they come in contact with each other.
We are going to use this term furthermore in this video. Now, This is where the plot twists for both Jupiter and the Ghost Planet. Everytime, the Ghost Planet came into contact with Jupiter Saturn and rest of the Giants, it experienced Gravitational Kicking from them, pushing its orbit further away in space from the Sun, until one last time, when Jupiter finally kicked it so hard that it never returned as close to the Sun as it used to be.
It wasn’t really thrown out of the orbit of the sun, but in an orbit too large to observe. From there on, external interactions of this Planet with other Stars and the combined gravitational pull of external stars pulled it further away from us, pulling the planet away in silent eternity, forever roaming in deep and silent darkness of the Universe, unaffected by all the happenings in the Universe.
Other examples of planets being flung away out of their Solar Systems
The Ghost Planet isn’t the only Planet in our universe flung miles apart from its hometown, similar to us human beings :) . Recent discoveries have shown a lot more Planets leaving their respective Solar Systems, with many varying reasons, ranging from instability to the distance factor.
Some Planets’ orbits have even been discovered to be larger than the orbit of our Oort cloud, although such cases are rare. The Ghost Planet was surely a mystery to astronomers, but were we ever less curious whenever it came to fact verifications. As of today's date, we are currently observing thousands of Solar System’s formations, all thanks to our companions, the Hubble Telescope and James Webb telescope.
Conclusion
But, can we surely say this was all there could be to the Lost Giant? Was this the only possible reason for the Ghost Planet to escape our realm of visions? Or, was the Lost Planet ever a part of our Solar System? Couldn’t it be that the Ghost Planet was never a part of our Solar System, instead being an alien wandering Planet whose course of motion got changed by its interaction with our Solar System?
Couldn’t it be that the Ghost Giant, is the Ninth Planet, still in orbit around our sun? We will leave the doubts to you. And of course, don’t ever shy away to present your doubts in our comment section. We love to hear from you and reply to all your comments. Also, keep sharing all the love at our channel. It helps us make more interesting topics like this, enhancing both your and our curiosity. Be tuned in for more updates and continue being insanely curious.