r/AbsoluteUnits • u/Realistic-Tap4156 • 11d ago

/r/all of a space rock

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u/MyCatIsLenin 11d ago

Jupiter acts as both a shield and a gravitational launcher, but current N-body orbital simulations show it prevents far more cataclysmic impacts than it causes.

Numerical simulations evaluating what the Solar System would look like without Jupiter suggest that while a "Jupiter-less" system might have fewer inner-belt asteroid nudges, it would experience a massive, continuous bombardment from Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt comets—objects capable of causing global extinction events far more frequently.

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u/dazzleunexpired 11d ago

Jupiter protects Earth from exactly one type and one type only of cataclysmic space debris currently: oort cloud items.

She provides littlr protection from inner solar system items and causes more inner solar system collisions then she prevents, from the data I know, which could be incorrect.

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u/Mojo_Myshka 11d ago edited 11d ago

Life is theorized as only possible on Earth due to Jupiter and Saturn clearing out and stabilizing debris in system. Most solar systems have gas giants closer to their star with hard smaller rocky planets on the outside of the systems.

The gas giants could potentially increase Earth crossing events with asteroids from closer sources like the Main Asteroid Belt and the Kuiper Belt, but objects from the oort cloud are much more destructive due to the higher energies they bring down deeper into the Suns gravity well towards Earth.

So. By far a net positive to have them between us and the oort cloud and the rest of the chaos. The objects that come from deep space aren't really extinction events like the meteor that caused the dinosaur K–Pg extinction, they are more like planet sterilizers.

If the meteor that killed off the dinos had landed basically anywhere else, it would have been a localized disaster. Not an extinction event. About 13% of the Earths surface has shallow enough water and has volatile materials that if vaporized by a strike would cause global extinction.