Jupiter, our solar system's fifth planet from the Sun and a massive gas giant that shields Earth and the inner planets from potentially disastrous comet and asteroid collisions, is far more peculiar than you could ever have thought.
The gas giant does not orbit the Sun because of its immense mass. The combined mass of all the other planets in our solar system is 2.5 times greater than that of Jupiter. This shows that the gas giant is so large that its centre of gravity, instead of being inside the Sun, is located just above the surface of our Sun. And there's a very good reason behind that.
A smaller object does not go in a circle around a
larger one when it circles it. Instead, they both orbit a "shared"
centre of gravity, which means that they collide exactly in the middle.
Jupiter, though, is special. Because of the gas giant's immense mass, the distance between its centre of mass and the Sun's core is precisely 1.07 solar radii or 7% of a sun radius over the Sun's surface.
Additionally, the following NASA GIF illustrates the
impact:
It is possible that the gas giant, which is thought to be 143,000 kilometres wide, may swallow up the entire known planets in our solar system.
The gas giant can actually fit around 1,300 Earths inside of it. Because the Suns are so close to our planet's gravitational centre, the impact is negligible. As a result, the Earth orbits the Sun, which appears to be orbiting the larger object (the Sun).
The mass centres of every other planet in our solar
system, including Mercury, Venus, and even Saturn, are located inside the Sun.
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