Technically, Jupiter does not orbit the Sun. In many cases, neither does Earth.

The mutual gravitational force causes the planets to orbit a common point in space, known as the barycenter, and not the Sun directly.

For centuries, the image of planets orbiting the Sun in an organized way was fundamental to our understanding of the Solar System. But scientists say this image, while useful, is not entirely accurateespecially with regard to Jupiter.

The story begins with Galileo Galilei, who in 1610 used a telescope to observe moons orbiting Jupiter. Your discovery challenged the old idea that everything revolved around the Earth and helped pave the way for the heliocentric model of the Solar System.

However, modern physics has further refined our understanding. According to the researchers, the Planets do not orbit the Sun directly. Instead, they move around a common point in space, known as the barycenter, which refers to the common center of mass between two or more objects.

In most cases, this barycenter is located within the Sun due to its enormous mass, which represents about 99.86% of the Solar Systemexplains .

But Jupiter, the largest planet, complicates this scenario. With more than twice the mass of all the other planets combined, Jupiter exerts a gravitational force so great that it moves the barycenter between it and the Sun to a point just beyond the solar surface.

As NASA explains, this means that both Jupiter and the Sun orbit this common point, rather than Jupiter simply orbiting the Sun. “When you have this mass, You don’t orbit the Sun itself“, notes the agency.

The same principle applies to the entire Solar System. Even the Earth and the Moon orbit a barycenter located about 5,000 kilometers from the center of the Earth, rather than the Moon orbiting the Earth alone. Similarly, the dwarf planet Pluto and its moons also revolve around shared centers of mass.

In addition to the individual pairs, the entire Solar System has its own barycenter, influenced mainly by the gravitational pull of Jupiter and Saturn. This central point moves over time and is often located outside the Sun.

At its core, the Solar System is not a collection of objects orbiting a fixed Sun, but an ever-changing gravitational dance in which not even the Sun itself remains perfectly still.