A ground-breaking examine of historical meteorites has supplied the primary proof to counsel that Jupiter was as soon as a lot nearer to the solar earlier than it shifted place.
The analysis tentatively backs up the idea that when the planet was shaped, billions of years in the past, gravitational forces slowly sucked it in the direction of the centre of the solar system, and that it was as soon as roughly as shut as Mars now could be.
However Jupiter was then pulled again out once more to its present location following the formation of Saturn, scientists imagine.
It is assumed that in this back-and-forth migration, which befell over tens of millions of years, the large gasoline planet triggered main gravitational disruption to asteroids and different our bodies - together with inflicting a few of them to smash into one another.
Until now there had been no bodily proof to assist the so-called "Grand Tack" idea, however scientists imagine they might have discovered it after a global staff of researchers analysed a group of angrite meteorites.
The rocky particles, collected from the Antarctic and North West Africa, had been shaped round 4.5 billion years in the past - across the identical time as Jupiter's suspected formation and migration.
A chemical evaluation discovered single samples had been discovered to have two completely different planetary origins, suggesting the meteorites had been the results of mid-space collisions, probably attributable to Jupiter's gravitational disruption within the photo voltaic system.
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'An enormous photo voltaic system occasion'
Ben Rider-Stokes, a PhD pupil on the Open University, mentioned the findings supplied essential clues concerning the formation and migration of Jupiter.
He added: "This study indicates these meteorites are a result of asteroids and bodies colliding together and possibly due to the gravitational disruptions of Jupiter's formation and movement.
"This, subsequently, supplies the primary empirical proof for this occasion, which has solely been beforehand modelled."
Mr Rider-Stokes said what happened to Jupiter had been "an enormous photo voltaic system occasion".
"The formation and migration of big gasoline planets akin to Jupiter are essential to the evolution of planetary programs, and but the timing of those occasions in our photo voltaic system stays largely unconstrained.
"Angrite meteorites represent some of the oldest materials in the inner solar system, and therefore provide an exclusive window into the processes that occurred during this period," he mentioned.
The findings have been printed within the journal Nature Astronomy.
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