Physics On Saturn And Jupiter

Why do Jupiter and Saturn have more satellites (moons) than the sun has (planets)?

The force of gravity is directly proportional to the mass of the two bodies in question and inversely to the square of their distance. This means that the more massive a body is, the more gravity it has. But also, the farther you go away from it, the less gravity you experience. When you compare the gravitational force exerted by two bodies (say Sun and Jupiter) on a third body (say Jupiter's moon Io), you have to take into consideration the location of the third body. Even though the Sun is more massive than Jupiter, Io is closer to Jupiter so it comes under Jupiter's influence. This concept is called the Hill Sphere. The Hill Sphere of a body is the radius around a body where the gravitational force exerted by it is greater than the influence of the gravitational force of other massive bodies. Any object that is within the Hill Sphere of another body will orbit it. That's why Io orbits Jupiter, the Moon orbits the Earth, and Rosetta orbits the comet 67P! Physical proximity to the body matters.Besides, the influence of the Sun is much much greater than just eight (not nine) planets. Neptune is not even 1/1000th point of the extent of the gravitational influence of the Sun. I wrote about that here, if you're interested: Sandhya Ramesh's answer to What is there beyond Pluto's orbit in our solar system? Have we discovered anything beyond Pluto's orbit? The Sun holds quite a large amount of objects in its gravity, and many of those hold other objects in their own gravitational influence. As for why there are more moons than planets, it is simply due to our own definitions of planets. If we include the dwarf planets as well, the list will grow to 14. If we include asteroids, it might grow to 140,000. If comets, to 1,400,000. Only the largest bodies that are stable and dominant are called planets. On the contrary, anything even remotely tiny that orbits a planet is considered its moon.

Why does Saturn and Jupiter have more Moons than the other planets?

Why some planets have many moons is basically because of their size. The planets in our solar system that have more moons are the large planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.They're so big that they can collect a lot of moon.If comets swing by them, they can sometimes absorb comets, they can grab asteroids. And there's a lot more material as it starts to condense into that big planet. There is more left behind that swirled around the planet and it left more moons.We can look at the number of moons in the solar system.Mercury has zero moons and is close to the Sun, Venus has zero moons, also close to the Sun. Earth has our one, which was probably a large impact that came from farther out. And Mars has two moons. All of these planets were very close to that great, big Sun and the Sun absorbed most of those objects. Mars probably has two because there's a big asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Jupiter has 50, the largest planet, Saturn, second largest planet, has 53. Uranus also very large, 27, Neptune, farthest away has 14. And then, there's another kind of rocky asteroid belt called the Kuiper belt,Pluto out there has five. Just because it was near those little rocky leftovers, so it could grab some of them.so, why do some planets have more moons than others? Mostly because of their size, the larger planets have more moons.Hope you understandTq.

What if Jupiter suddenly flew out of its orbit straight into Saturn, what would happen?

First off, I’d like to clarify that there is as low a chance of this happening as there is of a monkey typing Shakespearean on the first go. There is simply no other object within the solar system, aside from the sun, that would gravitationally influence Jupiter to veer off into Saturn’s orbit. Even then, the probability of direct impact with Saturn is improbable onto the highest levels.But let’s throw you a bone and say that it somehow happens. After all, we’re at hypothetical scenarios. I’m going to assume that Jupiter impacts Saturn at twice it’s orbit speed, which would be ~94,000 kilometers per hour.Keep in mind that these numbers are off the top of my head; a rough estimate. I doubt if this is even marginally correct, but at least it conveys the rough, basic idea.Firstly, Jupiter would completely annihilate itself and Saturn with the collision. That much is clear; Jupiter is an enormous body with incomprehensible mass, and it’s colliding with Saturn, another gigantic body with YUGE mass. It’ll be the equivalent of a Cold War gone nuclear.It’ll be MAD.