How Jupiter And Saturn Protect Earth From Killer Asteroids

Researchers from NASA were able to discover how gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn can prevent planets like Earth from experiencing major asteroid impacts. Based on their findings, these gas giants seem to balance out the Solar System and protect other planets from getting hit by massive asteroids.

The researchers were able to see the importance of gas giants through a series of computer models of the solar system. Without Saturn and Jupiter, NASA’s researchers discovered that the large impacts that produced enough debris to form moons and even other planets would happen more frequently.

According to Tom Barclay of NASA’s Ames Research Center, the presence of gas giants allowed major impacts within the Solar System to happen much earlier, which is fine since complex life has not yet begun to appear on Earth.

However, if Saturn and Jupiter did not exist, these impacts would happen at a much later time and more frequently.

“If you have giant planets, your last giant impact happens somewhere between 10 and 100 million years [after planet formation], which is pretty fine — it's like what happened on Earth,” Barclay said, according to Space.com.

“If you don't have giant planets, the last giant impact can happen hundreds [of millions] to billions of years in,” he continued. “This really is a risk to habitability.”

Barclay and his team explained that during the formative years of any solar system, large debris zoom across space. Eventually, these massive objects become the building blocks of planets and natural satellites as they collide and stick with one another.

Through computer simulations, the researchers learned that shortly after Saturn and Jupiter were formed, their immense gravitational force and the angular momentum they added to the Solar System hurled the remaining roaming debris out into interstellar space. Those that remained within the system became part of the existing planets through collisions.

Without these gas giants, the researchers warned that the Solar System would have a cloud filled with massive cosmic bodies orbiting near planets. This would be similar to the Oort Cloud, a region near the edge of the Solar System where comets that occasionally fly near Earth originate from.