It's definitely a tired meme that is really losing effectiveness in terms of getting my attention. I think the best titles tease you with a bit of insight.
Sort of off topic. But how much influence does Jupiter's gravity exert on the rest of the solar system? If it disappeared tomorrow what effects on other planets would we see?
It has been theorized that Jupiter protects the inner planets from short periodic comets. The large gravity well of Jupiter makes it more likely that a comet falls under its influence, either colliding with Jupiter such as in the case of Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994, or deflecting the comet into a hyperbolic orbit so that it leaves our solar system entirely.
I know that it has a great influence on the Kuiper belt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt but I'm not sure if it would change us much, we might actually be safer. Or in more danger, Jupiter soaks up a lot of junk that might have ended up in our neighborhood.
I remember being told as a child that jupiter and its gravity protected us from the various asteroids and other mineral interlopers of the solar system, but the following google search suggests that this is now in doubt:
As Homer Simpson once said of alcohol, it is the cause of and the solution to all of our problems. While it does intercept some of the nasty rocks and snowballs, it also perturbs objects that would otherwise have been in stable orbits. In an office environment, this would be called "making himself indispensable".
