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The BBC program with Brian Cox "The Planets" involved some description of the Grand Tack hypothesis to explain the current state of the solar system.

This theory has Jupiter wandering through the solar system causing various orbital disruptions. Are there any computer simulations/CGI videos available to show how Jupiter may have achieved this?

On a sightly unrelated note: I recall reading Velikovsky's "Worlds in collision" many years ago. He had a similar idea but attempted to attribute these changes to biblical events / comets. He was many orders of magnitudes out in terms of timing and the size of the disruption, but I suppose he could be credited with hinting that Geological uniformitarianism might not be applicable to the solar system.

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    $\begingroup$ Important detail: A scenario like this wouldn't be accepted as possible into the astrophysics world without a simulation proving that it's possible. People don't become famous for baseless speculations. $\endgroup$
    – AtmosphericPrisonEscape
    Aug 15, 2019 at 9:02
  • $\begingroup$ This video is close enough to your question to be worth a look. It shows multiple simulations from various starting points and in my opinion, it's a high quality lecture. youtube.com/watch?v=7dRLvSzDHo8 These kind of simulations, to my understanding, require supercomputers. The calculations required are enormous. $\endgroup$
    – userLTK
    Aug 15, 2019 at 12:45

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Kevin Walsh, lead author of the original Grand Tack paper has a page on his website discussing the Grand Tack model and subsequent work. At the bottom of this page there is a movie of the evolution taken from the numerical simulation that was the basis of the paper and the Grand Tack model. Sean Raymond (one of the other authors on the Walsh et al. 2011 paper) also have some movies on his research webpage on the Grand Tack model. There is also a presentation from the 2019 Sagan Workshop which discusses terrestrial planet formation in more detail and presenting the 2 other possible solutions, along with the Grand Tack model, to the early Solar System formation problems such as the so-called "small Mars" problem.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks very much for that! A great resource! $\endgroup$
    – MiguelH
    Aug 15, 2019 at 8:25

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