Now, researchers suggest that in doing so, Jupiter and other gas giants may have contributed something else crucial to rocky worlds: water.
The most massive worlds may have shepherded water-rich debris from the outer solar system to fall on the rocky worlds.
After the gas giants have fully developed, the debris they hurl inward can be dangerous.
Water, of course, is a key ingredient for the evolution of life as we know it on Earth.
Around that time, Raymond first became intrigued with how Jupiter may have shaped water delivery in the early solar system.
The drag of the still-present nebula gas affects how the debris moves through the solar system, sending a fraction of them inward towards the inner solar system.
In our own solar system, the model shows that ices from the outer solar system snowed down on the Earth in three waves. »