Hal Levison on the Mission to Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids
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There are many unanswered questions about the early history of the Solar System. In particular, did the giant planets form roughly at the distances from the Sun they presently occupy, or, as some theories predict, have they migrated to their present positions after they formed? The discovery of other solar systems with radically different configurations of planets has made this question more pressing, since it appears that the configuration of the Solar System is highly atypical.
In the podcast, Hal Levison explains why the Trojans asteroids of Jupiter offer us the best opportunity to discriminate between the various models of Solar System evolution. And that is why a spacecraft called Lucy is now well on its way to a rendez-vous with these asteroids.
Hal Levison is the Principal Investigator of the Lucy mission. He studies the dynamics of astronomical objects, and in particular, the formation and long-term behavior of solar system bodies. He is one of the original proponents of the Nice model, a scenario that proposes the migration of the giant planets from an initial compact configuration closer to the Sun to their present positions. He is Chief Scientist in the Department of Space Sciences at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder Colorado.
Podcast Illustrations
Images courtesy of NASA and SWRI unless otherwise indicated.
Animation showing the leading and trailing swarms of Trojan asteroids (green) on either side of Jupiter (yellow). The inner planets Mars (red), Earth (blue), Venus (white), and Mercury (brown) are also shown. As Levison explains in the podcast, the Trojans occupy a stable orbit where the centrifugal force and the gravitational pull of the Sun and Jupiter are balanced.