  The Sun was an order of magnitude more luminous during the first few hundred
thousand years of its existence, due in part to the gravitational energy
released by material accreting from the Solar nebula. If Jupiter was already
near its present mass, the planet's tides opened an optically-thin gap in the
nebula. We show using Monte Carlo radiative transfer calculations that sunlight
absorbed by the nebula and re-radiated into the gap raised temperatures well
above the sublimation threshold for water ice, with potentially drastic
consequences for the icy bodies in Jupiter's feeding zone. Bodies up to a meter
in size were vaporized within a single orbit if the planet was near its present
location during this early epoch. Dust particles lost their ice mantles, and
planetesimals were partially to fully devolatilized, depending on their size.
Scenarios in which Jupiter formed promptly, such as those involving a
gravitational instability of the massive early nebula, must cope with the high
temperatures. Enriching Jupiter in the noble gases through delivery trapped in
clathrate hydrates will be more difficult, but might be achieved by either
forming the planet much further from the star, or capturing planetesimals at
later epochs. The hot gap resulting from an early origin for Jupiter also would
affect the surface compositions of any primordial Trojan asteroids.
