Hello and
welcome back to the new episode 4 of season 3 and today we are embarking on
another journey but this time not very distant, only in our neighborhood. As
the title suggests I’m going to talk about ‘Trojan Asteroids’ and you might be
wondering what they are since most people only know the meaning of term
‘Asteroid’. Are they type of asteroids? Well, I wouldn’t call it that but
rather a category of asteroids that is different in its own way and a subject
of interest when it comes to understanding the birth of our Solar System. So,
without any further wait let’s talk about “Trojan Asteroids”.
Don’t let the
title mislead you into believing that Trojan asteroids are formed from Jupiter
because it is a gaseous planet. So where do they come from? To understand that
let’s understand the concept of Asteroids. These are the leftovers from the
Planetary nebula that gave birth to our solar system, meaning after planets
were formed, the stuff that could not coalesce into planets, became asteroids.
They can be found in the asteroid belt that is located between Mars and
Jupiter. There are various theories regarding the birth of these Trojan
Asteroids and one of them states that these were formed at the same time, in
the same region of planetary disk where Jupiter was forming. While another
theory states that these are captured asteroids by Jupiter. This is one of the
reasons why sometimes this planet is called the protector of Earth as it
continues to protect our planet from getting bombarded by huge asteroids.
There are
thousands of such Trojan asteroids lurking around Jupiter but in order for them
to be around Jupiter and not crash into the Jupiter itself, they have to have
some sort of stability. This is where the concept of Lagrange point comes in. I
will not go into much detail about this but all I can tell you that is these
are the points around an object in space where the gravity gets cancelled out
by the centrifugal force of the object. Thus, creating a point where if any
object gets trapped or enters, It will stay locked and won’t go anywhere. This
was used in the parking of James Webb Space Telescope, which is at the Lagrange
Point 2 of Earth, which is on the further side facing away from the Sun.
Jupiter also
has such point and that is where these Trojan Asteroids are located. In fact,
they are on two L-points of Jupiter at 60 degree each on L4 and L5 points. In
other words, Jupiter has two swarms of asteroids that share the same orbits
with planet around the Sun. The first Trojan asteroid discovered was 588
Achilles and was discovered in the year 1906 by German astronomer Max Wolf.
Like most of the objects, these are also named after characters in Greek
mythology. And these are named after characters in the Trojan war of the same
mythology. There are more than 15000 Trojan asteroids that are known so far and
according to an estimate the total number of Jupiter Trojans that are above 1
km in size is 1 million. This was from me for this short episode. I will see
you next time.
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