In the young solar system, which was shaken by numerous cataclysms, giant planets could be a source of stability. Without Jupiter and Saturn, attracting the lion's share of asteroids and other cosmic bodies, the Earth would be exhausted under their bombardment.
“If there were no giant planets, we would have a completely different system,” said NASA astrophysicist Tom Barclay, speaking recently at the 227th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Computer simulations of the young solar system, carried out by Barclay and his colleagues, showed that the massive bombardments characteristic of that period, without Saturn and Jupiter, would be much more powerful and ultimately fatal to fragile life on Earth.
“If giant planets are introduced into the model, then such catastrophic events stop 10–100 million years after their formation,” the scientist adds. “This is exactly what happened on the young Earth. But if they are not, then the bombing continues for hundreds of millions of years. This is a serious risk to habitability."
Indeed, after the formation of the Sun and its planets, a lot of "construction debris", dust, fragments and debris remained in our system, which for a long time rushed over it, gravitating, colliding and falling on young planets with deadly "showers". If there were no giant planets, this could go on for a very long time, and the solar system would remain full of clusters of all kinds of bodies, constantly bombarding random planets.
However, modeling by Tom Barclay has shown that the influence of gas giants on the periphery of the solar system quickly cleared space - which, incidentally, has been demonstrated by a number of past studies. As a result, the era of catastrophes quickly ended, and a relatively calm period began, during which life appeared and developed on Earth.
Sergey Vasiliev
