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Jupiter is Four Times Nearer Now to the Sun Than it was Before

 

Space keeps on driftin’, driftin’.

A new study led by a team of astronomers from Lund University revealed that Jupiter is actually four times nearer now to the Sun than it was millions of years ago.

The results of the study, according to New Atlas, “could explain a few of the solar system’s oddities,” such as the reason why Mars isn’t as big as Jupiter and why there aren’t any ‘Super-Earths’ around us in the solar system.

“This is the first time we have proof that Jupiter was formed a long way from the Sun and then migrated to its current orbit,” explains lead author of the study, Simon Pirani. “We found evidence of the migration in the Trojan asteroids orbiting close to Jupiter.”

The team used computer simulations in order to calculate Jupiter’s distance from the Sun back when it was still an icy asteroid floating through space. Researchers also discovered that it was gravitational forces coming from surrounding gases in the solar system that pushed Jupiter inwards two to three million years after it formed, forcing it to move closer to its current orbit. The process took ‘only’ 700,000 years, which is quite a short time in terms of the universal scale.

Currently, Jupiter is known to orbit the Sun at a distance of around 780 million kilometers (485 million miles).

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