Trojan Horse Troy is a city. This city is so famous because of a war that lasted for 10 years. This war was called the Trojan War.
This is a mythical story similar to the Chinese Gods List. The name of this war is for a world-class beauty named Helen. The two sides of the war are the Greeks and the Trojans.
The 10-year war finally decided the winner because of a horse. This horse was not a real horse, but a huge wooden horse. This wooden horse was taller than the tall and majestic city gates of Troy.
The Trojans tore down the city gates and pushed the huge wooden horse abandoned by the Greeks into the city. The Greeks who were hiding in the wooden horse at night came out and cooperated inside and outside to win the war and killed all the Greeks. The Trojan men took away Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, and took all other women and children as slaves.
This story is very long. If you are interested, you can find the information to check it out. It won’t take up much space here.
What I’m talking about here is the Trojan asteroids in the solar system. The so-called Trojan asteroids refer to a group of asteroids that are in special orbits with Jupiter. These asteroids follow Jupiter one after another in the orbit of Jupiter.
The positions of these asteroids are exactly at the Lagrangian points L4 and L5 between the Sun and Jupiter.
This group of asteroids originally had no connection with Trojans. It was only because Max Wolf, the German astronomer who first discovered asteroids of this nature, named the discovered asteroid No. 588 as the Trojan War. Named after the Greek hero Achilles.
All asteroids discovered later at point L4 were named after Greek heroes, while asteroids discovered at point L5 were named after Trojan heroes. This group of asteroids is collectively called Trojan asteroids.
What is a Lagrange point? In fact, it is the balance point between the gravity of the planet and the sun, also known as the translation point. It is the five special solutions to the restricted three-body problem in celestial mechanics.
In the solar system, each planet will form such a gravitational balance point with the sun. There will be five such points, named L1, L2, L3, L4, and L5 respectively. At these points, some small celestial bodies or man-made objects can remain basically stationary, and two of them are the most stable.
The Trojan asteroids are located at the L4 and L5 Lagrange points of Jupiter, orbiting the sun with Jupiter in tandem like escorts.
In fact, there is a main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This is a dense area of ????asteroids. It is estimated that there are as many as 500,000 asteroids. There are now 500,000 asteroids that have been discovered and numbered. 120,437 pieces.
In addition to being controlled by the gravity of the sun, these main asteroid belt asteroids are also affected by the gravity of Jupiter. Since Jupiter is closer, in fact, they are more affected by Jupiter's gravity. So why are there a group of Trojan asteroids besides the asteroids in these asteroid belts? What is the reason for their formation?
Traditional theory holds that Trojan asteroids were formed from planetesimals near Jupiter when it was born, and were captured by Jupiter's gravity as it grew. Some people also believe that these asteroids may have formed farther away. Because Jupiter's gravity disrupted the original running state of these asteroids, they were gradually brought to roughly the same orbit.
The Lagrange point is the most stable haven. These weak small celestial bodies make their home here, which is of course the safest and most stable.
However, these mechanisms are still under discussion and have not been fully understood.
More than 2,000 Trojan asteroids have been discovered, including more than 1,000 at Jupiter's Lagrange points L4 and L5.
And now that Trojan asteroids have been discovered and patented by Jupiter, traces of Trojan asteroids have been found on Mars, Neptune, and even the Earth.
Six were discovered in the orbit of Neptune, four in the orbit of Mars, and one in the orbit of the Earth.
Saturn has also discovered two groups of satellites with orbital properties of Trojan asteroids, so they are considered to be Trojan satellites. They are Phoebe, Tethys, and Phoebe, and Phoebe, Dione, and Phoebe.
Our Earth's Trojan asteroid is called 2010 TK7. It was discovered by the Wide-Field Infrared Surveyor in 2011. It is about 300 meters in diameter and is located at the No. 4 Lagrange point between the sun and the Earth.
It seems that so-called Trojan asteroid-like objects may be common among the major planets and even dwarf planets in the solar system. However, since Jupiter has the largest number of Trojan asteroids and has already exclusively occupied this name, such asteroids discovered on other planets must be preceded by planetary names, such as Neptune Trojan asteroids.
Some people believe that some of the planet’s satellites may have evolved from Trojan asteroids. And are these asteroids lurking in planetary orbits really Trojan horses? Could it be that the names scientists gave them unintentionally could actually launch an attack on the planet one day? (A joke without scientific basis, please don’t take it seriously)
There is also the definition of a planet determined by the International Astronomical Union. One of the important ones is that it must clear other celestial bodies in its orbit. Obviously due to the existence of Trojan asteroids, it can be considered that many planets have not cleared their orbits of small celestial bodies. This definition of a planet is quite controversial.
Discoveries continue, and so does controversy.
That’s it, discussion is welcome.
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