Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2015

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2015 39 PLANETOLOGY Sun-Jupiter S ome of the most current theories on the formation of our solar system indi- cate that the presence of Jupiter has been instrumental in shaping the system that we know today, and it has therefore probably been a determining factor also in the appearance of life on Earth. Although hundreds of other systems were discovered in the last twenty years, whose planetary orbits and masses varied greatly, the only one that surely hosts life remains ours, and while we wait to find out to what extent its architecture can be considered harbinger of life, the most likely path that researchers can follow for finding systems analogous to ours is to discover twins of Ju- piter, which rotate around stars identical to the Sun, on orbits very similar to that of Ju- piter. This kind of research is fundamental for estimating the dissemination of systems similar to ours, but it is hampered by some contingent factors that astronomers must