13 ms·

Thanks, Jupiter! Jupiter is thought to be one of the reasons earth is so hospitable, with its high gravity protecting inner planets from some comets and space

Thanks, Jupiter! Jupiter is thought to be one of the reasons earth is so hospitable, with its high gravity protecting inner planets from some comets and space debris [1]. I, for one, think we need a Jupiter appreciation day. https://earthsky.org/space/is-it-true-that-jupiter-protects-earth/ https://earthsky.org/space/is-it-true-that-jupiter-protects-...

meowface 5y ago
Is that something people searching for ET life look out for? Systems with a potentially habitable planet + at least one large celestial object to draw debris towards it and away from the potentially habitable planet?
- pc86 5y ago
  Are we able to see far-away systems in this level of detail? I know we can calculate number of planets and rough size/makeup, but are we able to tell that Planet A is in the habitable zone and Planet B is 300x+ the mass of Planet A, etc?
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    We can for a lot of systems. The shorter the orbital period, the easier they are to detect, however, and to detect Jupiter from a nearby system we’d need to be very lucky.
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    Yes, at least using the transit method. Sometimes, we do use the Doppler shift caused by a planet pulling the star towards or away from us. That works as long as the orbital plane is not perfectly perpendicular to us. However, it only works for large planets (and reasonably sized stars) that have sufficient gravity to make the star move fast enough to see the light shift red or blue. An earth-mass planet would be undetectable compared to a Jovian planet. The transit method requires the orbital plane to be perfectly on axis so we can observe an eclipse as the planet passes between the star and our telescope. This is rare, but works for even small planets, as long as the angle is right. And if one angle is right, it's likely that others will be close enough as well; a large planet can also be observed. In systems that are at the right angle, Kepler often found several planets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanets_discovered_using_the_Kepler_space_telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanets_discovered_...
- Chris2048 5y ago
  Hmm, I wonder if there are lots of variables that go into "likelihood of being hit by asteroid" - e.g. the size of the central star in the first place, and the resulting radius of the hab zone. It's also of not: if earth hadn't been hit by at least some asteroids, it mightn't have any water.
drhagen 5y ago
Given that Western civilization worshiped Jupiter as top god for a thousand years, you would be in good company historically [1] to have have a Jupiter appreciation day. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(mythology)#Religious_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(mythology)#Religious_...
- osrec 5y ago
  So do many Eastern civilisations...
  - ohnohell 5y ago
    Ok...
- iKevinShah 5y ago
  In India, Jupiter is called as "guru" (Sanskrit:बृहस्पति). बृहस्पति roughly translates to "guru" of the gods.
  - geoffjentry 5y ago
    Interesting. Is there any connection in Sanskrit for that word to Dyaus [1], as that deity was an equivalent of Zeus/Jupiter [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyaus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyaus
- globular-toast 5y ago
  Not because they understood the gravity thing, though. I've always thought civilisations that worship the Sun have the right idea.
- sillyquiet 5y ago
  Jupiter, along with Zeus, Tyr, and a whole host of others are cognate with the Proto-Indo-European *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr, literally 'sky father'.
- sillyquiet 5y ago
  The sky father was the chief god of the steppe people that lived north of the Black and Caspian Seas during the Neolithic into the Bronze Age, so 'Jupiter' as such was worshiped for 2000 years before the Greek speakers called him that. As these people (according to all the currently most accepted archaeological and linguistic evidence) are the ancestral culture of most of Europe, Iran, and India (with the exception of the native Dravidians), it makes sense the Greeks as well as most of the religions of Europe and southwest Asia also worshipped him.
phreack 5y ago
I suggest Thursday!
- macintux 5y ago
  Wouldn’t Wednesday (Woden’s Day) be more appropriate?
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Thursday is literally named after jupiter in latin and latin based languages (french, spanish, etc)
    - cobbzilla 5y ago
      The Germanic Thursday is “Thor’s day”, I guess Jupiter is more like Thor than Odin/Woden.
      - SirFatty 5y ago
        Old English/Norse.
        cobbzilla 5y ago
        to be more specific, yes. I was going with the least specific branch of the tree that was still different and widely recognizable.
      - dkersten 5y ago
        Even "Thor's day" is linked to Jupiter, in that Thor and thunder gods were the equivalent of the thunder god Jupiter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday#Thor's_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday#Thor's_day
    - aylons 5y ago
      Ha, just now I realized "Jeudi"... lucky day today! But just some romance languages. Portuguese does not.
areoform 5y ago
There are some astronomers who believe that the converse is also true - Jupiter also flings in Kuiper-Belt Objects into Earth-Crossing Orbits. The results are complicated, https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/49/1/1.22/306978 https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/49/1/1.22/306978 Relevant quote, > The flip side of the coin is also true, however — for an object to threaten the Earth, it first has to have an Earth-crossing orbit. Were Jupiter absent, there would be far fewer short-period comets, and it is likely that the asteroid belt would be far less heavily stirred, though it is also true that, without Jupiter, the asteroid belt would no doubt look very different! Every encounter between a small body and Jupiter is random — it throws objects inwards as well as outwards, and can just as easily place objects onto an Earth-crossing orbit as it can remove them from these orbits. Therefore, it is clear that at least some of the objects that hit the Earth would not have done so, had Jupiter not played a role. > Whether Jupiter acts as a friend or a foe comes down to the balance between the two effects discussed above — does Jupiter provide more of a shielding effect, or is the contribution to the terrestrial impact flux so enhanced by the objects it throws our way that this outweighs its defensive work? In order to examine this balance, we are in the process of a series of detailed integrations, following the behaviour of hundreds of thousands of potential impactors in a range of theoretical solar systems. Given that there are three reservoirs of potentially hazardous objects (the Oort Cloud, the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, and the asteroid belt), our study will be looking at each of these reservoirs in turn. It is currently unclear whether the net effect is harmful or beneficial. But what we do know is that the fact that we are dyadic system (i.e. our moon is arguably the size of a planet - and we exist in a pair with it) has protected us during Sol's younger and more active days. More specifically it protected us from ending up like Mars with a stripped away atmosphere. This hypothesis is fairly well studied and is held to be very likely to be true. Our moon, along with Jupiter, may also act as interference for the Earth w.r.t. Earth-crossing asteroids. There are arguments against this because of the smaller size of the Moon, but there are also some analyses for this - given that the asteroids are affected by the Moon's gravity, and even though the Earth-Moon Barycentre lies within the Earth, the combined system may afford some protection. (i.e. asteroids are more likely to have more near misses given the displacement of the barycentre from the centre of the Earth). But this is a guess, and more study is needed. Papers, When the Moon had a magnetosphere - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abc0865 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abc0865 The timeline of the Lunar bombardment - revisited. - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.03756.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.03756.pdf The Late Heavy Bombardment in The Inner Solar System: Is there Any Connection To Kuiper Belt Objects? - https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.615.8510&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.61... Bashing holes in the tale of Earth’s troubled youth - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01074-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01074-6
NHQ 5y ago
If it hit Jupiter on the inner orbit side, then whatever struck the outer planet already missed us (if it was ever within our orbit to begin with). Since we can see the impact from Earth, it must have struck the inner orbit side.
- kijin 5y ago
  It could have been captured from another angle and swung around wildly before its orbit finally intersected the "surface" of Jupiter.
dylan604 5y ago
I think there would be a lot of push back from christian based religions. They would be offended at the mere suggestion. So if you're really wanting this, be prepared for a fight.
- dctoedt 5y ago
  > I think there would be a lot of push back from christian based religions. They would be offended at the mere suggestion. Perhaps from some of the fundamentalist sects, but unlikely from the liberal mainline branches; we'd recognize "Jupiter" as referring to the planet, not the Roman name of the Greek mythological Zeus.

meowface 5y ago

Is that something people searching for ET life look out for? Systems with a potentially habitable planet + at least one large celestial object to draw debris towards it and away from the potentially habitable planet?

pc86 5y ago
Are we able to see far-away systems in this level of detail? I know we can calculate number of planets and rough size/makeup, but are we able to tell that Planet A is in the habitable zone and Planet B is 300x+ the mass of Planet A, etc?
- rbanffy 5y ago
  We can for a lot of systems. The shorter the orbital period, the easier they are to detect, however, and to detect Jupiter from a nearby system we’d need to be very lucky.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  Yes, at least using the transit method. Sometimes, we do use the Doppler shift caused by a planet pulling the star towards or away from us. That works as long as the orbital plane is not perfectly perpendicular to us. However, it only works for large planets (and reasonably sized stars) that have sufficient gravity to make the star move fast enough to see the light shift red or blue. An earth-mass planet would be undetectable compared to a Jovian planet. The transit method requires the orbital plane to be perfectly on axis so we can observe an eclipse as the planet passes between the star and our telescope. This is rare, but works for even small planets, as long as the angle is right. And if one angle is right, it's likely that others will be close enough as well; a large planet can also be observed. In systems that are at the right angle, Kepler often found several planets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanets_discovered_using_the_Kepler_space_telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanets_discovered_...
Chris2048 5y ago
Hmm, I wonder if there are lots of variables that go into "likelihood of being hit by asteroid" - e.g. the size of the central star in the first place, and the resulting radius of the hab zone. It's also of not: if earth hadn't been hit by at least some asteroids, it mightn't have any water.

drhagen 5y ago

Given that Western civilization worshiped Jupiter as top god for a thousand years, you would be in good company historically [1] to have have a Jupiter appreciation day. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(mythology)#Religious_calendar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(mythology)#Religious_...

osrec 5y ago
So do many Eastern civilisations...
- ohnohell 5y ago
  Ok...
iKevinShah 5y ago
In India, Jupiter is called as "guru" (Sanskrit:बृहस्पति). बृहस्पति roughly translates to "guru" of the gods.
- geoffjentry 5y ago
  Interesting. Is there any connection in Sanskrit for that word to Dyaus [1], as that deity was an equivalent of Zeus/Jupiter [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyaus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyaus
globular-toast 5y ago
Not because they understood the gravity thing, though. I've always thought civilisations that worship the Sun have the right idea.
sillyquiet 5y ago
Jupiter, along with Zeus, Tyr, and a whole host of others are cognate with the Proto-Indo-European *Dyḗus ph₂tḗr, literally 'sky father'.
sillyquiet 5y ago
The sky father was the chief god of the steppe people that lived north of the Black and Caspian Seas during the Neolithic into the Bronze Age, so 'Jupiter' as such was worshiped for 2000 years before the Greek speakers called him that. As these people (according to all the currently most accepted archaeological and linguistic evidence) are the ancestral culture of most of Europe, Iran, and India (with the exception of the native Dravidians), it makes sense the Greeks as well as most of the religions of Europe and southwest Asia also worshipped him.

phreack 5y ago

I suggest Thursday!

macintux 5y ago
Wouldn’t Wednesday (Woden’s Day) be more appropriate?
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Thursday is literally named after jupiter in latin and latin based languages (french, spanish, etc)
  - cobbzilla 5y ago
    The Germanic Thursday is “Thor’s day”, I guess Jupiter is more like Thor than Odin/Woden.
    - SirFatty 5y ago
      Old English/Norse.
      - cobbzilla 5y ago
        to be more specific, yes. I was going with the least specific branch of the tree that was still different and widely recognizable.
    - dkersten 5y ago
      Even "Thor's day" is linked to Jupiter, in that Thor and thunder gods were the equivalent of the thunder god Jupiter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday#Thor's_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday#Thor's_day
  - aylons 5y ago
    Ha, just now I realized "Jeudi"... lucky day today! But just some romance languages. Portuguese does not.

areoform 5y ago

There are some astronomers who believe that the converse is also true - Jupiter also flings in Kuiper-Belt Objects into Earth-Crossing Orbits. The results are complicated, https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/49/1/1.22/306978 https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/49/1/1.22/306978 Relevant quote, > The flip side of the coin is also true, however — for an object to threaten the Earth, it first has to have an Earth-crossing orbit. Were Jupiter absent, there would be far fewer short-period comets, and it is likely that the asteroid belt would be far less heavily stirred, though it is also true that, without Jupiter, the asteroid belt would no doubt look very different! Every encounter between a small body and Jupiter is random — it throws objects inwards as well as outwards, and can just as easily place objects onto an Earth-crossing orbit as it can remove them from these orbits. Therefore, it is clear that at least some of the objects that hit the Earth would not have done so, had Jupiter not played a role. > Whether Jupiter acts as a friend or a foe comes down to the balance between the two effects discussed above — does Jupiter provide more of a shielding effect, or is the contribution to the terrestrial impact flux so enhanced by the objects it throws our way that this outweighs its defensive work? In order to examine this balance, we are in the process of a series of detailed integrations, following the behaviour of hundreds of thousands of potential impactors in a range of theoretical solar systems. Given that there are three reservoirs of potentially hazardous objects (the Oort Cloud, the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, and the asteroid belt), our study will be looking at each of these reservoirs in turn. It is currently unclear whether the net effect is harmful or beneficial. But what we do know is that the fact that we are dyadic system (i.e. our moon is arguably the size of a planet - and we exist in a pair with it) has protected us during Sol's younger and more active days. More specifically it protected us from ending up like Mars with a stripped away atmosphere. This hypothesis is fairly well studied and is held to be very likely to be true. Our moon, along with Jupiter, may also act as interference for the Earth w.r.t. Earth-crossing asteroids. There are arguments against this because of the smaller size of the Moon, but there are also some analyses for this - given that the asteroids are affected by the Moon's gravity, and even though the Earth-Moon Barycentre lies within the Earth, the combined system may afford some protection. (i.e. asteroids are more likely to have more near misses given the displacement of the barycentre from the centre of the Earth). But this is a guess, and more study is needed. Papers, When the Moon had a magnetosphere - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abc0865 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abc0865 The timeline of the Lunar bombardment - revisited. - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.03756.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.03756.pdf The Late Heavy Bombardment in The Inner Solar System: Is there Any Connection To Kuiper Belt Objects? - https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.615.8510&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.61... Bashing holes in the tale of Earth’s troubled youth - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01074-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01074-6

NHQ 5y ago

If it hit Jupiter on the inner orbit side, then whatever struck the outer planet already missed us (if it was ever within our orbit to begin with). Since we can see the impact from Earth, it must have struck the inner orbit side.

kijin 5y ago
It could have been captured from another angle and swung around wildly before its orbit finally intersected the "surface" of Jupiter.

dylan604 5y ago

I think there would be a lot of push back from christian based religions. They would be offended at the mere suggestion. So if you're really wanting this, be prepared for a fight.

dctoedt 5y ago
> I think there would be a lot of push back from christian based religions. They would be offended at the mere suggestion. Perhaps from some of the fundamentalist sects, but unlikely from the liberal mainline branches; we'd recognize "Jupiter" as referring to the planet, not the Roman name of the Greek mythological Zeus.