Sentences with phrase «as giant comets»

Not exact matches

But interactions with the newly formed giant planets ejected many of those comets into interstellar space, flung others out into what would become the Oort Cloud, and knocked some into elongated, somewhat shorter orbits in what is known as the scattered disk.

This leaves plenty of elbowroom for undetected terrestrial planets to huddle close their star, just as Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars do.What's more, the gas giants could irrigate parched inner terrestrial planets with ices from comets and asteroids they perturb.

The giant planets nudge comets in toward the system's star, as was the case in the Solar System during the Late Heavy Bombardment about 4 billion years ago.

This allows it to study a variety of astronomical objects, such as the molecular gas in planetary nebulae, molecules on active comets, the heating mechanisms of red giants and the afterglows of gamma - ray bursts.

Others (such as Glenn Schneider of the University of Arizona and Scott Kenyon of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory), however, argue that a giant planet in the system could gravitationally deflect comets and asteroids away from inner planets that may support life in the liquid water zone, in the same way that Jupiter protects Earth in the Solar System.