SPACE.COM - Like huge playground bullies, planets like Jupiter can be "agents of chaos" around other stars, a pair of new studies suggest.
Gas giant planets that are the size of Jupiter or larger create havoc in young planetary systems, often shoving smaller, Earth-sized planets way out of their original, circular orbits, according to the new research.
All this instability spells bad news for life on terrestrial planets, as organisms need stable conditions to take root and flourish. Just watch the 2011 film "Melancholia" to get the idea: a planet — once hit by, or veering too close to, a neighbor — will see its climate permanently destabilize.
Take the nightmare scenario of four giant planets that orbit a star known as HD 141399. "It's as if they have four Jupiters acting like wrecking balls, throwing everything out of whack," Stephen Kane, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) who authored one of the new studies, said in a Wednesday (Oct. 31) statement.