You might think that Jupiter, being the biggest planet in the solar system, would just smash through anything in its way. But that's not how gravity works, my friend.
Gravity is a force that pulls objects together, but it also keeps them in balance.
That's why the Earth doesn't crash into the Sun, or the Moon into the Earth. They all orbit around a common center of mass, which is slightly offset from the Sun.
Now, Jupiter has a lot of mass, so it has a lot of gravity. But it also has a lot of neighbors: the Sun, Saturn, and thousands of asteroids.
Some of them asteroids are called Jupiter trojans, because they share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun.
They are not just random rocks floating around; they are actually trapped in special places called Lagrange points.
Lagrange points are positions in space where the gravitational forces of two large bodies (like the Sun and Jupiter) cancel out.
There are five such points for each pair of bodies, but only two of them are stable: L4 and L5.
These points form an equilateral triangle with the Sun and Jupiter, 60 degrees ahead and behind Jupiter in its orbit.
The trojan asteroids are clustered around these points, like loyal soldiers following their leader into battle.
They are not fixed in place; they oscillate around the Lagrange points in complex patterns called tadpole and horseshoe orbits.
But they never stray too far from their positions, because if they do, they will feel the tug of Jupiter's gravity and be pulled back into line.
So why doesn't Jupiter hit the trojan asteroids?
Because they are in a delicate balance with the Sun and Jupiter's gravity.
They are not orbiting Jupiter; they are orbiting the Sun with Jupiter. They are not in Jupiter's way; they are in harmony with Jupiter.
