Chapter 609 - 360: Europa: Damn it! _2
Regarding the gravitational sphere of influence of Jupiter, there are some misconceptions that need to be clarified.
As the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter indeed possesses a powerful gravitational pull, but this doesn’t mean it has a specific "gravitational range" or "gravitational radius" as some non-scientific articles might describe.
In fact, the gravitational influence of a celestial body is infinite, although the strength of the gravity decreases rapidly with distance.
According to Newton’s law of universal gravitation, Jupiter’s gravitational influence extends indefinitely throughout the universe, but at distances far from Jupiter, this influence becomes extremely weak,
so much so that one doesn’t need to travel far from Jupiter before its gravity can be considered negligible in practical applications.
Although Jupiter exerts gravitational influences on some smaller celestial bodies within the Solar System, such as comets or asteroids, these influences are usually confined to the area around Jupiter, particularly within the range of Jupiter’s Hill Sphere.
The Hill Sphere refers to the region in space where a celestial body can effectively dominate with its own gravitational pull against the stellar gravitational field.
For Jupiter, its Hill Sphere radius is about 50 million kilometers, meaning that within this distance, Jupiter’s gravitational influence on other bodies is greater than that of the Sun.
However, this does not mean that Jupiter’s gravitational influence is limited to this distance. It just means that beyond this distance, the Sun’s gravitational pull starts to dominate.
Therefore, when Chen Yun arrived at the "gravitational range" of Jupiter, he essentially entered Jupiter’s Hill Sphere.
With only about fifty million kilometers left to Jupiter,
