So Jupiter gets nailed about once every 15 years, apparently. Why doesn’t Earth get more action? Are we just incredibly lucky or Jupiter incredibly unlucky?
Size matters, I guess.
According to wiki, Jupiter occupies a volume the equivalent of 1321 Earths, and has a mass 317 greater than Earth. I guess Earth doesn’t look all that appealing to suicidal comets and asteroids.
Paging Angua to explain it all.
Even so, Earth hasn’t had anything even come relatively close to it that I know of like Jupiter has had (at least) twice in such a short period of time.
One reason is that we have big ol’ Jupiter and Saturn out there to sweep up any debris that happens to be floating through the neighborhood. Thanks, big guys!
Win on all levels.
google “near miss asteroids”.
Also, isn’t the asteroid belt alot closer to Jupiter?
Jupiter sucks worse than Earth? 
There’s a menstruation / Red Spot joke in here somewhere waiting to be told.
**Smeghead **nails it in one - IANAAstrophysicist, but I remember from my rabid amateur astronomy days that there’s a hypothesis out there stipulating that the giants Jupiter and Saturn (to a lesser extent) act like giant dustcatchers, hoovering up all the nasties that would otherwise find their way to the inner solar system. IIRC, some even postulated that without a Jupiter, life might never have arisen on Earth because of the greater bombardment. Some go even further to postulate that all solar systems need a Jupiter in order for life.
That said, we do get nailed every day. Happily, the vast majority are teeny and cause little or no damage.
Speak for yourself.
I JUST noticed how the title of this thread fit all of the jokes…
Their ability to do so is so powerful galaxy wide that it catches just about everything along the lines of Shoemaker-Levy? I’ve heard that as well but criminy that’s a lot of space we’re talking about.
Apparently. Jupiter’s gigantic - if anything small comes in its neighborhood (and it’s a big neighborhood), its course will change due to Jupiter’s gravity. Shoemaker-Levy was affected by Jupiter a full year before it smacked into the planet. It doesn’t necessarily have to get captured by Jupiter; in most cases, just the course alteration is enough to send whatever it is hurtling harmlessly in a different direction from the inner planets.
Well, Jupiter has had some 3.5 billion or so years to sweep up the solar system. It had a clear 1.5 billion years (give or take) to clean things up before the first life of almost any sort appeared on Earth.
The solar system is now largely cleaned up and most things are in stable orbits so we no longer sit in a shooting gallery. Yeah, there is still stuff out there that could hit us but not as bad as it once was.
To have an idea of how much the Earth may have been hit over time just look at this picture of the far side of the moon.
ETA: Saw Cisco’s answer below. Hope you meant “solar system” wide. The galaxy has little to do with this.
Galaxy-wide? Most, if not statistically all, comets and asteroids come from within the Oort Cloud. Of this I am almost completely sure, unless my astronomy professor mislead me.
Jupiter catches a lot of shit because it is many, many, many times more “attractive” (in the gravitational sense) than Earth.
Yup.