Featured image credit: Eric Vanderpool via Flickr
OK, check this. Remember back in primary school when your lovely teacher told you that everything in our solar system orbits around the Sun?
Well your kind, friendly and angelic teacher was a God damn liar because not everything in our solar system orbits the Sun.
Jupiter doesn't. It's only the fifth planet from the Sun and apparently is so big that its centre of gravity is actually much further from the centre of the Sun than everything else in the solar system.
Let me try my best to explain.
So, basically, the centre of gravity between two objects is always 'combined' - meaning it's never orbiting a perfect circle around the centre of the larger object.
Between an object like the International Space Station and the Earth, the combined centre of gravity is so close to the centre of the Earth that it basically doesn't matter. The same can be said of all the planets in the solar system and the Sun. Except Jupiter.
Jupiter's mass is 2.5x bigger than all the other planets of the solar system combined, which makes it fucking massive. So fucking massive that its combined centre of gravity with the Sun is actually much further from the centre of the Sun than the rest of the planets.
NASA produced this not-to-scale gif to try and help people understand...
So there you have it. What you were told in primary school was a fucking lie and now you have an awesome little fact to tell people at parties. If you're that kind of party goer. Which I'm sure you're not. Leave the science fact-telling to me, lads.
Words by George Pavlou
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