Scientists Find Jupiter Used to Be More Than Twice Its Current Size

You don't need us to tell you that Jupiter, which has more than twice the mass of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, is the biggest game in town (other than the Sun, at least.) But believe it or not, it may have once been even bigger. Try more than double its current size, according to new research from Caltech and the University of Michigan — boasting enough volume to fit 2,000 Earths inside it with room to spare. Over time, the bloated world cooled off, contracting to the relatively humbler size it is today. The findings, published in a new study in the journal Nature Astronomy, provide a window into the Solar System's early evolution, around 3.8 million years after the first solids formed. Jupiter, with its enormous gravitational pull — and as the first planet to form — would have played an instrumental role in determining how the orbits of the nascent planets eventually settled. "Our ultimate goal is to understand where we come from, and pinning down the early p ... Read full article.