Produced by: Manoj Kumar
A chilling simulation reveals that a super-Earth forming in our solar system could have led to disastrous climate chaos, making Earth uninhabitable.
Scientists Emily Simpson and Howard Chen discovered that if a super-Earth had existed between Mars and Jupiter, Earth's delicate climate balance would have been destroyed.
A hypothetical super-Earth, named Phaedra, could have caused extreme winters, scorching summers, and an unlivable environment on Earth, according to simulations.
Models showed that even a super-Earth twice the mass of our planet would have resulted in catastrophic seasonal shifts and volatile weather patterns.
If Phaedra had been 10 to 20 times Earth's mass, its gravitational pull would have rendered Earth completely uninhabitable, forcing life to vanish.
Howard Chen noted, "The configuration of our solar system is uncommon," highlighting how its unique formation avoided the chaos a super-Earth could have caused.
Super-Earths, the most common exoplanets in the Milky Way, can be made of gas, rock, or both—but their absence in our solar system may have spared us from disaster.
The lack of a super-Earth in our solar system isn’t coincidence—it’s a stroke of cosmic luck, allowing life on Earth to thrive uninterrupted.
As Florida Institute of Technology researchers conclude, had a super-Earth formed here, life as we know it would never have existed.