Word: slingshot
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...which limits how dense it can become, and in turn limits how hard its gravity can pull on the proto-planets. Beyond that, the planets' own gravity would fling gas around - the same sort of phenomenon NASA counts on, say, when a spacecraft en route to Saturn gets a slingshot velocity boost from Jupiter on the way. By adding in both effects, Mac Low's collaborator Sijme-Jan Paardekooper, now at Cambridge, found that there are places where the net force pushes a planet inward, but other places where it pushes outward. And in between those are places where...