An interstellar visitor, much larger than any celestial body in our solar system, may have dramatically altered the orbits of planets, scientists have claimed. The research has yet to be peer-reviewed but has been published arXiv The preprint database shows that this cosmic intruder, possibly eight times the mass of Jupiter, passed very close to the orbits of Mars today, potentially affecting the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
For a long time, scientists have said that under ideal conditions, the planets should lie in concentrically arranged circles around the Sun and in the same plane – meaning that if you look at them from the side, you should only see one. The line will be visible. However, since the planets revolve around the Sun in different orbits in three-dimensional space, it becomes almost impossible for them to come together in a straight line.
To understand the anomaly, researchers considered a scenario from about four billion years ago when a star-sized alien object was moving through our solar system. They ran extensive simulations through 50,000 scenarios, each spanning 20 million years, adjusting various parameters such as the visitor’s mass, speed, and closest approach to the Sun.
These simulations indicated that in about one percent of cases, this cosmic guest could reshape the orbits of these planets to match what we see today.
“We estimate that there is about a 1 in 100 chance that such a flyby produces a dynamical architecture similar to the Solar System,” the study highlights.
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The findings revealed that the interstellar object would have come within 1.69 astronomical units (AU) of the Sun, which is just beyond the current orbit of Mars. An astronomical unit is roughly the distance from the Earth to the Sun. This proximity would have been close enough for the visitors’ gravity to pull our planets and push them onto new paths.
“The scenario of a close encounter with a substellar object provides a plausible explanation for the origin of moderate eccentricities and inclinations and for the secular architecture of planets.”
Previous theories had suggested that orbits might have been reshaped by planetary interactions within the Solar System. However, the new study challenges this notion and argues that a one-time event could explain these irregularities.
The scientists said this scenario requires further exploration that could explain “the effects of substellar flybys on the dynamical excitations of minor planets in the asteroid belt and trans-Neptunian belt.”