Jupiter is the big brother of the earth who takes hits on earth’s behalf and protects the younger sibling from the bad boys outside. Jupiter has a very strong gravitational force owing to its size, which causes a lot of asteroids to get deflected from their paths which might have led them straight towards the earth.
Jupiter is the second biggest gravitational influencer in the solar system after the sun. Jupiter has its gravitational influence over a lot of objects nearby. If Jupiter were to vanish, the gravitational influence it had over the objects nearby would be strongly affected. Of course, it’s 79 moons that would fly off in all directions. Roughly half of them would fly off towards the inner solar system towards Earth and the other half in the other direction.
Jupiter has the most mass of all the planets in our solar system, as such it is the second-largest gravitational player in our solar system next to the Sun. Jupiter's gravitational effects are the reason why there is a large asteroid belt between Mars and itself, holding the asteroids in a somewhat stable orbit counteracting the Sun's gravitational pull. If Jupiter is to simply disappear the asteroid belt would surely become unstable at that instant and millions of asteroids small and large would all the sudden be dominated gravitationally by the Sun's pull and their orbits would go anywhere depending on how they slammed into each other and pulled by other larger gravitational forces, potentially slinging some back into the inner solar system on a collision course with Earth.
But we don't need to worry about it. Jupiter is a Gas giant. Gas giants, as best as we know, simply do not explode. So, this situation will never occur. But I have tried to answer if Jupiter suddenly disappears then what could happen. That's all in this article. I hope you enjoyed it. Please comment below your views and share this. Cheers!
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