( CNN ) It turns out that Jupiter may be more than just an enormous ball of gas spinning a few hundred million miles farther out in the solar system . We earthlings might have the giant planet to thank for our very existence . Two scientists are suggesting that the inner solar system once played host to a bunch of `` super-Earths '' -- planets that were larger than our own but smaller than Neptune . Jupiter , however , put an end to those early occupiers of the inner orbits , bulldozing in and sweeping them into the sun , according to a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Jupiter 's epic , planet-shattering journey toward the sun and back out again laid the foundations for the creation of Earth and the other smaller planets nearby -- Mercury , Venus and Mars . `` Our work suggests that Jupiter 's inward-outward migration could have destroyed a first generation of planets and set the stage for the formation of the mass-depleted terrestrial planets that our solar system has today , '' said Konstantin Batygin of Caltech , one of the authors of the paper . The theory attempts to explain why our solar system is a bit of an oddball in our galactic neighborhood . Most other systems that have planets orbiting around a star similar to our sun look very different . They generally have at least one planet significantly larger than Earth that 's in a closer orbit than Mercury 's . But they do n't have many objects farther out . Maybe that 's because of Jupiter 's destructive romp in the early history of the solar system . `` There is no reason to think that the dominant mode of planet formation throughout the galaxy should not have occurred here , '' Batygin said . `` It is more likely that subsequent changes have altered its original makeup . '' He and his co-author -- Gregory Laughlin of University of California , Santa Cruz -- are building on a scenario of Jupiter 's migration that was previously put forward by other scientists . Known as the Grand Tack scenario , it describes Jupiter getting drawn toward the sun in the early era of the solar system thanks to its huge mass . What stops it from being sucked right into the sun is Saturn . The two gas giants start to exert gravitational influence on one another , entering a planetary dance that eventually sends them back farther out into the solar system . Batygin and Laughlin suggest that during its inward journey , Jupiter dragged a load of planetary building blocks , known as planetesimals , along with it . That sent the planetesimals smashing into debris in the inner solar system , causing them to break apart and fall into the sun at a faster rate . The scientists say they ran a simulation of what would happen if there were also a number of super-Earths in the vicinity as well . They found that a wave of decaying planetesimals would steer the super-Earths into the sun over the course of 20,000 years . `` It 's a very effective physical process , '' Batygin said . `` You only need a few Earth masses worth of material to drive tens of Earth masses worth of planets into the sun . '' On its way back out , Jupiter left some remaining planetesimals in its wake -- the building blocks that over millions of years would come to form Earth , Mercury , Venus and Mars .
Scientists : An epic migration by Jupiter led to destruction of `` super-Earths '' and the birth of new planets in our solar system.