[X] My Assistant

[EDG]

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/105108519.html

This sounds rather promising as a way to explain our solar system, though it's a tad convoluted (basically, Jupiter moves inward, scrunches up planetoids within about 1 AU from the sun which means four rocky planets can form, then Saturn gets big enough to lock onto Jupiter in a resonance and the pair migrate outwards, tossing in all the stuff they threw out before to make the asteroid belt. And presumably Uranus and Neptune get pushed outward (a la Nice model) with Saturn to do their thing with the smaller outer solar system bodies).

(EDIT - OK, I just noticed it's not VERY new, it's from October 2010! But still, I missed it at the time and think it's interesting - anyone know of any further developments about this?)

[Mongo]

What a remarkable hypothesis. It does seem to explain a whole raft of Solar System puzzles in one fell swoop.

One thing that occurs to me is that if this idea is true, planetary systems like our own are likely to be very uncommon, since in the absence of a Saturn-analogue at the correct orbital ratio to that system's Jupiter-analogue, the resulting planetary system's inner region would be either far too dense (if it was not partially swept clear by the Jupiter-analogue) or swept clean entirely (if the Jupiter-analogue migrates all the way through the inner system). In either case, no Earthlike planerts are likely to form.

I will be looking forward to the continuing testing and development of this hypothesis.