Giant planets formed closer to the Sun than they are now and migrated to their current configuration during a period of orbital instability. Previous studies have suggested that this period would have occurred within the first 100 million years of the Solar System at most.
Researchers examined the Athor family of asteroids, generated about 3 billion years ago by the breakup of an ancient parent asteroid. Their chemical composition, studied thanks to telescopes, was found to be in line with that of rare meteorites found on Earth, the so-called E-type chondrites. The results of the study are published in the journal Science by an international research group coordinated by the Italian astronomer Alessandro Morbidelli who works at the Côte d'Azur Observatory in Nice. The research is not yet sufficient to consider the question closed. Another research from Johns Hopkins University, shared on arXiv and peer-reviewed by the journal Nature Astronomy, suggests that orbital instability could have played a role in the migration of giant planets.