Young Solar System's Fifth Giant Planet?

Abstract

Recent studies of solar system formation suggest that the solar system's giant planets formed and migrated in the protoplanetary disk to reach resonant orbits with all planets inside 15 AU from the Sun. After the gas disk's dispersal, Uranus and Neptune were likely scattered by gas giants, and approached their current orbits while dispersing the transplanetary disk of planetesimals, whose remains survived to this time in the region known as the Kuiper belt. Here we performed N-body integrations of the scattering phase between giant planets in an attempt to determine which initial states are plausible. We found that the dynamical simulations starting with a resonant system of four giant planets have a low success rate in matching the present orbits of giant planets, and various other constraints (e.g., survival of the terrestrial planets). The dynamical evolution is typically too violent, if Jupiter and Saturn start in the 3:2 resonance, and leads to final systems with fewer than four planets. Several initial states stand out in that they show a relatively large likelihood of success in matching the constraints. Some of the statistically best results were obtained when assuming that the solar system initially had five giant planets and one ice giant, with the mass comparable to that of Uranus and Neptune, was ejected to interstellar space by Jupiter. This possibility appears to be conceivable in view of the recent discovery of a large number free-floating planets in interstellar space, which indicates that planet ejection should be common.

References in corpus (8)

• Unbound or Distant Planetary Mass Population Detected by Gravitational Microlensing
• Origin of the Structure of the Kuiper Belt during a Dynamical Instability in the Orbits of Uranus and Neptune
• Dynamics of the giant planets of the solar system in the gaseous proto-planetary disk and relationship to the current orbital architecture
• Evidence from the asteroid belt for a violent past evolution of Jupiter's orbit
• Irregular Satellites of the Planets: Products of Capture in the Early Solar System
• Constraints on resonant-trapping for two planets embedded in a protoplanetary disc
• Secular resonance sweeping of the main asteroid belt during planet migration
• Considerations on the accretion of Uranus and Neptune by mutual collisions of planetary embryos in the vicinity of Jupiter and Saturn

Cited by in corpus (85)

• Statistical Study of the Early Solar System's Instability with 4, 5 and 6 Giant Planets
• Capture of Trojans by Jumping Jupiter
• Dynamics of pebbles in the vicinity of a growing planetary embryo: hydro-dynamical simulations
• The Planet Nine Hypothesis
• Mars' Growth Stunted by an Early Giant Planet Instability
• The Evidence for Slow Migration of Neptune from the Inclination Distribution of Kuiper Belt Objects
• Tidal Venuses: Triggering a Climate Catastrophe via Tidal Heating
• Origin and Evolution of Short-Period Comets
• Capture of Irregular Satellites at Jupiter
• The early instability scenario: terrestrial planet formation during the giant planet instability, and the effect of collisional fragmentation
• Dynamical evidence for an early giant planet instability
• Onset of giant planet migration before 4480 million years ago
• Scientific rationale for Uranus and Neptune in situ explorations
• Kuiper belt: formation and evolution
• Terrestrial Planet Formation Constrained by Mars and the Structure of the Asteroid Belt
• The Fragility of the Terrestrial Planets During a Giant Planet Instability
• Constraining the giant planets' initial configuration from their evolution: implications for the timing of the planetary instability
• Accretion of Uranus and Neptune from inward-migrating planetary embryos blocked by Jupiter and Saturn
• Outward migration of Jupiter and Saturn in 3:2 or 2:1 resonance in radiative disks: implications for the Grand Tack and Nice models
• The evolution of asteroids in the jumping-Jupiter migration model
• Tracking Neptune's Migration History through High-Perihelion Resonant Trans-Neptunian Objects
• Impact bombardment chronology of the terrestrial planets from 4.5 Ga to 3.5 Ga
• The consequences of planetary migration on the minor bodies of the early Solar System
• Orbital Perturbations of the Galilean Satellites During Planetary Encounters
• Dynamical Evolution of Multi-Resonant Systems: the Case of GJ876
• The Dynamical Evolution of the Asteroid Belt
• Bifurcation in the history of Uranus and Neptune: the role of giant impacts
• The Role of Early Giant Planet Instability in the Terrestrial Planet Formation
• Constraining the primordial orbits of the Terrestrial Planets
• Reassessing the formation of the Inner Oort cloud in an embedded star cluster II: Probing the inner edge
• The excitation of a primordial cold asteroid belt as an outcome of the planetary instability
• Is the Grand Tack model compatible with the orbital distribution of main belt asteroids?
• The Comparative Exploration of the Ice Giant Planets with Twin Spacecraft: Unveiling the History of our Solar System
• Terrestrial Planet Formation During the Migration and Resonance Crossings of the Giant Planets
• The Asteroid Belt as a Relic From a Chaotic Early Solar System
• Excitation of the Orbital Inclination of Iapetus during Planetary Encounters
• The Magellan PFS Planet Search Program: Radial Velocity and Stellar Abundance Analyses of the 360 AU, Metal-Poor Binary "Twins" HD 133131A & B
• Born eccentric: constraints on Jupiter and Saturn's pre-instability orbits
• Tilting Saturn without tilting Jupiter: Constraints on giant planet migration
• Detectability of Free Floating Planets in Open Clusters with JWST
• Not a simple relationship between Neptune's migration speed and Kuiper belt inclination excitation
• Checking the Compatibility of the Cold Kuiper Belt with a Planetary Instability Migration Model
• Instabilities in the Early Solar System due to a Self-gravitating Disk
• Making Planet Nine: A Scattered Giant in the Outer Solar System
• Dynamical Constraints on Mercury's Collisional Origin
• Dynamical Classification of Trans-Neptunian Objects Detected by the Dark Energy Survey
• Giga-Year Evolution of Jupiter Trojans and the Asymmetry Problem
• Jumping Jupiter can explain Mercury's orbit
• The terrestrial planet formation paradox inferred from high-resolution N-body simulations
• Origin and dynamical evolution of the asteroid belt
• Could Jupiter or Saturn Have Ejected a Fifth Giant Planet?
• Survivor bias: divergent fates of the Solar System's ejected vs. persisting planetesimals
• On the inclinations of the Jupiter Trojans
• Born extra-eccentric: A broad spectrum of primordial configurations of the gas giants that match their present-day orbits
• Origin and Evolution of Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids
• Evolution of MU69 from a binary planetesimal into contact by Kozai-Lidov oscillations and nebular drag
• Eccentric Early Migration of Neptune
• The Generation of the Distant Kuiper Belt by Planet Nine from an Initially Broad Perihelion Distribution
• Is There an Earth-like Planet in the Distant Kuiper Belt?
• The early instability scenario: Mars' mass explained by Jupiter's orbit
• Oort cloud asteroids: Collisional evolution, the Nice Model, and the Grand Tack
• Scattering V-type asteroids during the giant planets instability: A step for Jupiter, a leap for basalt
• A race against the clock: Constraining the timing of cometary bombardment relative to Earth's growth
• Dynamical formation of detached trans-Neptunian objects close to the 2:5 and 1:3 mean motion resonances with Neptune
• Can a jumping-Jupiter trigger the Moon's formation impact?
• Rethinking the role of the giant planet instability in terrestrial planet formation models
• Simulations of the Solar System's Early Dynamical Evolution with a Self-Gravitating Planetesimal Disk
• Tilting Styx and Nix but not Uranus with a Spin-Precession-Mean-motion resonance
• Mercury's formation within the Early Instability Scenario
• Circularizing Planet Nine through dynamical friction with an extended, cold planetesimal belt
• The Dynamic Proto-atmospheres around Low-Mass Planets with Eccentric Orbits
• Dynamical effects on the classical Kuiper Belt during the excited-Neptune model
• Constraints on planetesimal disk mass from the cratering record and equatorial ridge on Iapetus
• On planetary systems as ordered sequences
• Constraining giant planet formation with synthetic ALMA images of the Solar System's natal protoplanetary disk
• The Formation of the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt by a Short Range Transport Mechanism
• Pre-LHB Evolution of the Earth's Obliquity
• Capture of satellites during planetary encounters A case study of the Neptunian moons Triton and Nereid
• Crash Chronicles: relative contribution from comets and carbonaceous asteroids to Earth's volatile budget in the context of an Early Instability
• Very-wide-orbit planets from dynamical instabilities during the stellar birth cluster phase
• The High Rate of the Boyajian's Star Anomaly as a Phenomenon
• Signatures of a Distant Planet on the Inclination Distribution of the Detached Kuiper Belt
• The ODINUS Mission Concept - The Scientific Case for a Mission to the Ice Giant Planets with Twin Spacecraft to Unveil the History of our Solar System
• Hypothesis about Enrichment of Solar System
• Observational signatures of the giant planets collisions