Mystery of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids finally solved

An international team of scientists has succeeded in explaining the numerical asymmetry of the Jupiter Trojan clusters L4 and L5. Both

contain more than 10,000 asteroids thatmoving in the orbit of a gas giant around the Sun. For decades, scientists have known that there are many more asteroids in the L4 cluster than in L5. However, the reason for this mysterious asymmetry remained unknown.

In a new study, scientists have presented a mechanismwhich explains the observed asymmetry of the two Trojan clusters of Jupiter. As part of the study, they created a model that simulates the orbital evolution of a gas giant caused by planetary orbital instability in the early Solar System.

Photo: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

At some point he's at high speedmigrated towards the Earth. This is what changed the stability of the nearest asteroid clusters and led to the fact that there are about 1.6 times more asteroids in L4 than in the L5 cluster.

“The ability to successfully model an event early in the evolution of the solar system and apply these results to modern questions will be useful in other studies,” the scientists conclude.

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Cover photo: ESA/Gaia/DPAC