Sept. 7, 2006 — Planetary systems beyond the solar system that contain Jupiter-sized planets close to their suns have a good chance of spawning habitable earthly worlds, a new study concludes.
Computer models suggest massive planets that orbit their mother stars closer than Mercury circles our sun churn up raw material as they migrate inward, setting the stage for rocky planets like Earth to form in their wake.
The baby Earths could be bathed in oceans that have been delivered by small icy bodies traveling from the outer edges of dust discs from which solar systems are formed, researchers with the University of Colorado at Boulder, Pennsylvania State University and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., conclude in a study published in this week's issue of the journal Science.
"These gas giants cause quite a ruckus," said Sean Raymond with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado. "We now think there is a new class of ocean-covered, and possibly habitable, planets in solar systems unlike our own."
Previous computer models suggested material for planet formation would be tossed out of a solar system as giant Jupiter-class planets moved toward their parent stars.
But after an extensive eight-month simulation consolidating 200 million years of theoretical planetary evolution, the researchers conclude that proto-planetary disks containing more than 1,000 rocky and icy bodies as big as Earth's moon commonly form habitable Earths.
