Solar system once harboured super earths

Washington: Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have found that our solar system may have once harboured super-earths - planets larger than the Earth but smaller than Neptune. It means that the Earth belongs to a second generation of planets. Those early super-earths are long gone - broken up and fallen into the Sun billions of years ago largely due to a great inward-and-then-outward journey that Jupiter made early in the solar system's history. The results suggest the possibility of a new picture of the early solar system that would help to answer a number of outstanding questions about the current makeup of the solar system and of the Earth itself.