Jupiter influenced Earth’s future long before Earth formed, slicing gaps in the early solar system to stop its raw materials from falling into the sun, a new study has revealed.
The study was conducted by researchers at Rice University in Houston, and suggests Jupiter’s early growth blocked gas and dust from flowing inward, saving the material that later formed Earth, Venus, and Mars from spiraling into the sun.
“Jupiter didn’t just become the biggest planet-it set the architecture for the whole inner solar system; without it, we might not have Earth as we know it,” said the study co-author Andre Izidoro.
The findings appear in a paper published on October 22, 2025, in Science Advances.
By doing so, the researchers find that Jupiter’s gravity stabilized the inner planet’s orbits and sculpted the solar system, etching rings and gaps that controlled when and how rocky worlds took shape.
Using computer simulations, Izidoro’s team recreated Jupiter’s rapid growth during the solar system’s first few million years and its impact on the gas-and-dust disk around the young sun.
The models reveal that Jupiter’s powerful gravity sent ripples through the disk, creating dense, ring-shaped bands that acted like cosmic traffic jams.
The researcher further added that these rings trapped tiny dust grains that would otherwise have drifted into the sun, letting the grains collide and grow into the rocky seeds of planets.
