Why does Jupiter not really orbit the sun?
Jupiter the largest and most massive of all solar system planets. it is so massive that you can if dominates the solar system by its gravity even sun is not left with its effect. here in this blog, we will see how due to its massive size it does not really orbit the sun?
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| Jupiter |
In ancient times many civilizations thought that the sun, planets, and everything in the sky revolved around earth and earth is at the centre of the universe. As our understanding of the universe advanced we realized that it's not the case so. In Fact, all planets including earth revolve around the sun and there is no such thing as the centre of the universe. It appears as if we are at the centre of the universe it is only because of the fact that at greater scales our universe is homogeneous i.e. it looks the same in all directions from each and every point in the universe.
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| Ancient monastery |
Now let's come back to our solar system. We all have read in our geography and science textbooks that everything in the solar system revolves around the sun. But does it? Yes, there is no doubt that every planet and every other thing in our solar system travels around the sun in an elliptical path. But there is one screw here that is the case of Jupiter; the gas giant and biggest and heaviest thing in our solar system after the sun. It is so massive that it weighs more than twice (about 2.5 times) the mass of all of the other planets in the Solar System combined. However, because it's so enormously massive, Jupiter does not technically orbit the sun. When an object in space orbits another object (more massive one), it doesn't really orbit that object. Rather, both the objects orbit about a point (i.e.the common centre of mass) known as barycenter this is true for any object. But If one of the two orbiting bodies is much more massive than the other and the bodies are relatively close to one another, the barycenter will typically be located within the more massive object. This is true for lighter objects like our earth, which is 1/332,949th the mass of the sun, the sun-earth barycenter lies so close to the centre of the sun that it practically orbits the sun.
Illustration:
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| Two bodies with an extreme difference in mass orbiting a common barycenter internal to one body (similar to the Sun-Earth system) |
Illustration:
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| A large planet and a star orbit their shared centre of mass or barycenter (similar to the sun-Jupiter system) |
Thus we can say that in the case of Jupiter it does not technically orbit the sun but they both orbit around each other about a common point known as barycenter. I hope that now you have understood ‘Why does Jupiter not really orbit the sun?’. Thank you