Comet's Trail - Why Jupiter

I'm watching a documentary about comets right now. The commentator said that scientists want to further study the origin of the comet's trails but for that, they have to catch it before it passes Jupiter.

Unfortunately, they did not go further into this so I assume that science knows that Jupiter has something to do with it. It just sounded as if the whole world would know about a connection of comet's trails and Jupiter.

Does anybody know about this?

Here is a diagram of the Solar System, showing Jupiter and a bunch of asteroids. Notice anything?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co…

Jupiter's gravity is such that it alters the path of a body that passes anywhere near it. This is the case with any object, but particularly with Jupiter. I'm assuming, from what you say, that in order to reverse-engineer the path of a comet to see where they're coming from, scientists have to see the comet and track it for a time before it's orbit gets perturbed by Jupiter.

Comets are relatively small, just a few kilometres in diameter. They can't be detected easily until they start outgassing, which happens as they come closer to the sun.

anything that gets close to Jupiter is pulled by its gravity and a comet may be broken up

a few years ago a comet called "schumaker -Levi" broke up and crached into Jupiter with spectacular results

you may be thinking of the sun. a comet is usually a rocky snowball and when it passes the sun it heats up and may evaporate

Very little is actually known about comets. Here is a link to some theories that are better explained than what you hear in the news:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/

Maybe jupiters too far away. Or has too many moons. Or its too large, so it obscures the cometstwo view. Or maybe you run into problems beyond jupiter because of Saturn. Not sure really.