Jupiter: Largest and Oldest Fella in the Solar System

An artist’s concept of the Pioneer 10 spacecraft orbiting Jupiter. (Photo Courtesy: NASA)

Jupiter – the largest planet in our solar system – is also the oldest, say scientists who found that the gas giant formed within four million years after the formation of the Sun.

The pathbreaking study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Our solar system began as a disk of dust and gas 4.6 billion years ago. First came the gas giants, followed by planets. Jupiter is the biggest of them all. Despite being mostly gas, it’s more than 300 times the mass of the Earth. Knowing the age of Jupiter is therefore the key for understanding how the solar system evolved towards its present-day architecture.

Even though models in the past have suggested that Jupiter formed relatively early, until now its formation has never been dated. Several extraterrestrial materials that land on Earth were sampled to uncover the origins of Jupiter.

We do not have any samples from Jupiter (in contrast to other bodies like the Earth, Mars, the moon and asteroids). In our study, we used isotope signatures of meteorites (which are derived from asteroids) to infer Jupiter’s age.

Thomas Kruijer, from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the US

Our measurements show that the growth of Jupiter can be dated using the distinct genetic heritage and formation times of meteorites.

Thomas Kruijer

Photo of Jupiter taken by Hubble Space Telescope. (Photo Courtesy: NASA)

By looking at tungsten and molybdenum isotopes on iron meteorites, scientists found that meteorites are made up from two genetically distinct nebular reservoirs that coexisted but remained separated between one million and 3-4 million years after the solar system formed.

The most plausible mechanism for this efficient separation is the formation of Jupiter, opening a gap in the disc and preventing the exchange of material between the two reservoirs. Jupiter is the oldest planet of the solar system, and its solid core formed well before the solar nebula gas dissipated, consistent with the core accretion model for giant planet formation.

Thomas Kruijer

Jupiter is the most massive planet of the solar system and its presence had an immense effect on the dynamics of the solar accretion disk.

(Photo Courtesy: Tumblr/NASA)

Scientists showed through isotope analyses of meteorites that Jupiter's solid core formed within only about one million years after the start of the solar system history, making it the oldest planet.

Through its rapid formation, Jupiter acted as an effective barrier against inward transport of material across the disk, potentially explaining why our solar system lacks any super-Earths (an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth's).

The team found that Jupiter’s core grew to about 20 Earth masses within one million years, followed by a more prolonged growth to 50 Earth masses until at least 3-4 million years after the solar system formed.

The earlier theories proposed that gas-giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn involved the growth of large solid cores of about 10 to 20 Earth masses, followed by the accumulation of gas onto these cores.

So the conclusion was the gas-giant cores must have formed before dissipation of the solar nebula – the gaseous circumstellar disk surrounding the young sun – which likely occurred between 1 million years and 10 million years after the solar system formed.

Using the isotopic signatures of meteorites, researchers were able to date Jupiter much more precisely within 1 million years.

Further, NASA’s Juno’s spacecraft that orbited Jupiter last year has showed that both of the planet’s poles are covered in cyclones and anticyclone storms, densely clustered and rubbing together. Some of these storms are as large as the Earth!

(Photo Courtesy: Tumblr/NASA)

(With inputs from PTI.)