Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Goldilocks isn’t the only one who demanded everything to be “just right.” The Earth and its fellow seven planets also needed perfect conditions to form as observed, and those right conditions occur rarely, a new computer simulation shows.
The new simulation, described in the Aug. 8 Science, is the first to trace from beginning to end how planetary systems form from an initial gas disk encircling a baby star.
“The really striking result of the new model is how chaotic and even violent the average story of a planet’s birth is,” says Edward Thommes, an astrophysicist now at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
The process is typically a big mess. “Planets get into each others’ ‘personal space,’ gravitationally scattering each other. They compete with each other for gas from the disk that gives birth to them and lots of planets are lost along the way,” he says. “It’s almost like reality TV.”