Solar system instability simulation

This animation represents the results of a simulation designed and conducted by Beibei Liu of Zheijiang University, Sean Raymond of the University of Bordeaux&nbsp;and Seth Jacobson of Michigan State University. It shows how our solar system's gas giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — have spread out since the days of the early solar system. <br><br>The vertical gray line shows the inner edge of the&nbsp;protoplanetary disk, the cloud of dust and gas that gave birth to our solar system. The disk evaporated once the sun started burning and the inside-out dissipation of the cloud helps rearrange our gas giants (it even kicks a fifth gas giant out of our solar system in this iteration of the simulation).<br><br>For more information, read the trio's Nature paper at [LINK].