be explained if, early in the history of the Solar System, Jupiter and Saturn drifted towards the Sun, sending showers of planetesimals towards the super-Earths which sent them spiralling into the Sun, and ferrying icy building blocks into the terrestrial region of the Solar System which provided the building blocks for the rocky planets. The two giant planets then drifted out again to their present positions. In the view of Batygin and his colleagues: "The concatenation of chance events required for this delicate choreography suggest that small, Earth-like rocky planets – and perhaps life itself – could be rare throughout the cosmos." A continuously stable orbit Rare Earth argues that a gas giant also must not be too close to a body where life is developing. Close placement of one or more gas giants could disrupt the orbit of a potential life-bearing planet, either directly or by drifting into the habitable zone. Newtonian dynamics can produce chaotic planetary orbits, especially in a system having large planets at high orbital eccentricity. The need for stable orbits rules out stars with planetary systems that contain large planets with orbits close to the host star (called "hot Jupiters"). It is believed that hot Jupiters have migrated inwards to their current orbits. In the process, they would have catastrophically disrupted the orbits of any planets in the habitable zone. To exacerbate matters, hot Jupiters are much more common orbiting F and G class stars. A terrestrial planet of the right size The Rare Earth hypothesis argues that life requires terrestrial planets like Earth, and since gas giants lack such a surface, that complex life cannot arise there. A planet that is too small cannot maintain much atmosphere, rendering its surface temperature low and variable and oceans impossible. A small planet will also tend to have a rough surface, with large mountains and deep canyons. The core will cool faster, and plate tectonics may be brief or entirely absent. A planet that is too large will retain too dense an atmosphere, like Venus. Although Venus is similar in size and mass to Earth, its surface atmospheric pressure is 92 times that of Earth, and its surface temperature is 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F). The early Earth once had a similar atmosphere, but may have lost it in the giant impact event which formed the Moon. Plate tectonics Rare Earth proponents argue that plate tectonics