Our friendly neighbor protects us from stray asteroids, while gas giants in other solar systems may prevent life from forming due to their immense gravity.
While Jupiter may be our planetary guardian angel, protecting us from harm, gas giants in other solar systems might actually wreak havoc on other exoplanets nearby.In our solar system, Jupiter's huge gravitational field deflects comets and asteroids away from our delicate, rocky home planet.However, this gravitational field may put smaller planets in other solar systems at risk of being ejected from their orbits altogether.
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun, situated around 484 million miles from our star. At 86,900 miles in diameter, Jupiter is about 11 times wider than the Earth, and has between 80 and 95 moons.A second paper also published in The Astronomical Journal by Kane and UC Riverside colleague Tara Fetherolf, a planetary science postdoctoral scholar, reveals that one large planet in the middle of the habitable zone would have a similar effect.
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