We all learned about the solar system at an early age, and Jupiter has always been there in the mix. The “red planet”, the “gas giant”, known for being the largest of all the planets, Jupiter is generally not given much further thought than that. But what two scientists are now claiming is that Jupiter may in fact have acted as the orchestrator in the creation of the solar system we see today.

 

In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Konstantin Batygin and Greg Laughlin suggest that Jupiter once played host to a number of “super-Earths” described as larger than our planet but smaller than Neptune. The following theory is that Jupiter put those planets to a young and violent death by plowing through and sweeping them into the sun.

 

At this point it doesn’t sound like Jupiter is creating anything – only destroying, but as Batygin explains, “Our work suggests that Jupiter’s inward-outward migration could have destroyed a first generation of planets and set the stage for the formation of the mass-depleted terrestrial planets that our solar system has today.”

 

The paper also theorizes that Saturn played a part in keeping Jupiter from crashing into the sun itself, and that the odd beginnings of our solar system may account for why it looks a little different from others. Most other solar systems in our galaxy contain one planet larger than Earth orbiting closer than Mercury, and not too much else beyond that. It turns out we may have a lot to thank Jupiter for.