Rare 4 billion-year-old solar system discovered where planets are still orbiting in perfect sync

The remarkable discovery hints that the solar system has remained undisturbed since it was formed more than four billion years ago.

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:20 So an orbital resonance is when two objects orbiting around something else

00:25 have orbital periods that are a simple ratio of each other.

00:29 So, for example, if one object goes around in one year

00:34 and another object goes around in two years, then that is a two-to-one resonance.

00:39 [Music]

00:49 The reason why this planetary system is therefore interesting

00:53 is that actually many planetary systems don't have these orbital resonances

00:57 despite the fact that they are somewhat stable.

01:00 And that's because we think that over time, as planets are evolving

01:04 and the solar system is changing, they get knocked out.

01:07 Not literally whacking into one another, but getting slightly pushed away.

01:11 And so we end up with a number of planetary systems out there

01:15 which are close to being an orbital resonance,

01:18 but few that are actually in these resonances.

01:22 [Music]