A super-Earth beyond Mars would have made Earth nearly uninhabitable

[Admin]

A pair of planetary scientists simulated how our solar system might have evolved if it had a super-Earth orbiting where the asteroid belt is today. The results are enough to make you grateful that we only have eight planets.

A super-Earth beyond Mars would have made Earth nearly uninhabitable : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

The video in this article is interesting. It shows small rocky planets sublimating from dust at a particular radius in the protoplanetary disk and migrating inward toward the star, making room for another planet to form at the original radius and then also move inward. The concept is that the process makes smaller rocky planets from a less dense disk and larger rocky planets from more dense disk.

Which gets me to thinking about the difference between that and the development of the giant gas ball planets farther out.

In our solar system, there is an asteroid belt between the 2 classes of planets. I am wondering if that is not actually a demarcation of the transition in the formation processes between the 2 types of planets. I doubt we could detect an asteroid belt around even the closest star to us, with current technology. So, I am wondering how common some sort of asteroid belt really is.

The video also shows part of a graphic depicting the relative sizes of planets in the systems we have found (for the planets in them that we have been able to detect, so far). That part of the graphic displayed in the video does not show any mix of small and large planets at all, not even one like our own solar system, with small rocky inner planets surrounded by larger gas giants.

So, I am wondering if we are even detecting all of what is our there around each star.

And, I am wondering why a rocky "super earth" would for outside a batch of smaller rocky planets, anyway. As the dust disk is depleted, I would expect smaller planets, not larger ones.

And, if the largest gas giant forms outside of the zone where rocky planets tend to form, then that might well disrupt the development of a rocky planet near its orbit, just like the simulations suggest a large planet in the location of our asteroid belt would disrupt the inner planets.

Questions:
1. Does anybody know where I can find the full graphic for exoplanet sizes in each star system?
2. What is the total mass of the asteroids in our system? How many "Earths" would that make?

Answer for Q2: "The total mass of the asteroid belt is estimated to be 2.39×1021 kg, which is just 3% of the mass of the Moon." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid

So, it seems that the rocky planet material in the inner disk was scant at that radius. Was that because it was accumulated into Jupiter? Do we know how much rocky material lies in the center of Jupiter?

 

[Elad]

Has anyone ever simulated our solar system *without* the presence of Mars?
What effect would that have on Earth's climate, make it milder to the point that life does not evolve?