Jupiter’s Gravity May Have Sent 2 Planets to Edges of Solar System

Scientists say they may have solved a far-out mystery: how Uranus and Neptune came to exist at the very edges of the solar system. A new study in today’s Nature says the two icy planets may have been born much closer to the sun than previously thought, and ended up in their current orbits after gravitational forces from Jupiter violently hurled them away.

That would explain how the two planetary giants--each more than 10 times the mass of Earth--could exist at the far edge of the solar system, where there was not enough gas and dust to make a planet eons ago. The study is based on computer simulations conducted by Martin Duncan of Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, and colleagues.

Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II