Thanks God!

From the Space and Cosmos section of the Science section of the 7.21.2009 NY Times online paper comes the following excerpt:

“Something--probably a small comet--smacked into Jupiter on Sunday, leaving a bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean near its south pole,” the New York Times reports. Better Jupiter than Earth, we thought when we first heard about this. And it turns out we may have Jupiter to thank for the rarity of such events in this corner of the galaxy:
[Astronomer Frank] Marchis said the shape of the debris splash . . . suggested that whatever hit Jupiter might have been pulled apart by tidal forces from the planet’s huge gravity before it hit. In an e-mail message, he said humans should be thankful for Jupiter.
“The solar system would have been a very dangerous place if we did not have Jupiter,” he wrote. “We should thank our giant planet for suffering for us. Its strong gravitational field is acting like a shield protecting us from comets coming from the outer part of the solar system.”

Yet another example of the intricacies of God’s design.