The Nice model is a scenario for the dynamical evolution of the outer Solar System, developed by a team of astronomers working at the Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur in Nice, France, in which the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune migrated substantially from their original, more closely spaced orbits into their current configuration. The migration is proposed to have been driven by gravitational interactions with a massive surrounding disk of leftover planetesimals, and a resonance crossing during this migration is offered as a possible trigger for the Late Heavy Bombardment. The model has been influential in explaining features such as the population and structure of the Kuiper Belt and the orbits of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, though it has been revised and debated since its original 2005 publication.
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