Jupiter Might Be Eating Other Planets And That's Why It's So Big
A wild new study claims that Jupiter may have gobbled up nearby planets to become the space behemoth that it is today. Now, Jupiter is not the only body out there that is known to have engaged in some cosmic cannibalism. A study published earlier this year detailed a phenomenon called “stellar vampirism” in which a larger star sucked the atmosphere out of a neighboring star in the system named HR 6819. Also known as blue stragglers, a few such stars exist at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy as well. Galaxies are also known to engage in vampirism when they can’t find enough hydrogen to support star formation in their own cradle.
But planets like Jupiter are a different beast. So far, it was believed that Jupiter’s mass mostly comes from external pebbles that form its solid core. However, a key limitation to that theory is that once the planet’s outer gaseous shell is dense enough, it would create a pressure barrier that would stop more pebbles from accreting at the planet’s solid surface. And as such, the planet should have been much smaller in size. However, the concentration of heavy metals found in such solid bodies that serve as the raw material for planet formation is much higher on Jupiter’s rocky core, which puts a doubt on the pebble formation theory.
Related: We May Soon Find Out Why Jupiter's Great Red Spot Is Shrinking
As part of a new study, scientists studied the distribution of heavy elements on Jupiter and found that its chemistry is not uniform. In fact, the inner envelope has a higher percentage of heavy elements compared to the outer layer, which suggests that somehow, the inner layer continued to amass heavy elements as the planet was still in the early stages of its formation. The paper, which has
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