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Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter lies a ring-shaped region called the asteroid belt, home to the vast majority of our solar system’s space rocks. The asteroid belt is as old as the solar system itself, having formed from leftover material that failed to coalesce into a full-grown planet due to Jupiter’s gravitational influence.
Over the past 4.6 billion years, Jupiter has continued to shape the asteroid belt through gravitational resonances—regions where an asteroid’s orbit aligns…
