The star can "pull" the neighboring developing system. That's such a hypothesis was proposed to explain the strange paths of some of the exoplanets, as well as long-standing mysteries of inclination of the orbit of the Earth itself at 7 relative to the solar equator.

In 1995, Swiss astronomers discovered the first "hot Jupiter". To explain this oddity, theorists suggested that the planet was formed far away from their stars, but then migrated in a spiral through the protoplanetary disk of gas and dust. All this time she stayed inside the disk, so the tilt of its orbit around the equator of the star is missing.

But in 2008, according to this theory has been hit hard, when astronomers began to find "hot Jupiter" with orbits at an angle and even reverse orbits. These wayward planet looked victims gravity of other bodies of this star system.

And Konstantin Batygin of the Harvard-Smithsonian center for astrophysics (USA) suspects in reality distortion of the orbit becomes a natural result of migration in the disk. It is enough to take into account the fact that the development of planetary systems are usually influenced by various factors - the neighboring stars, for example. Made by Mr. Batygina calculations show how the planet giant winds its way through the disk with an orbit tilted with respect to the equator native lights.

"It is obvious idea, " says Josh winn from the Massachusetts Institute of technology (USA). And it is not difficult to verify. If Mr. Batygin rights, the offset must be as widespread and systems deprived of a "hot Jupiter" (time it does not require the presence of the giants). Today, the space telescope "Kepler" has executed the tilt measurement only one mnogoletnei system - Kepler-30, and there all three bodies are in orbits, coinciding with the equator of the star.

But we have another example is our own system. Konstantin Batygin suspects that the Sun was once a satellite is any star, and she tilted orbit, and then fled with the "crime scene".

Besides, there are systems of two and three stars. Our closest neighbor alpha Centauri, for example, consists of three bodies, one of which (the second in brightness) is a planet about the earth's mass. Mr. Batygin predicts that there really is the offset should be.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

Based on the materials ScienceNOW.