I once heard that Jupiter protects us because it’s so massive that it catches rocks that would otherwise come towards us. No idea if that’s true, but it makes for a nice story about the silent gassy protector.
Jupiter has a lot of magnetism and the baroque clockwork ballet of its moons in the solar wind and on its stormy poles never fail to sing their eternal opera. My grandfather, Hein Hvatum, thought this might be the case and happened to be the first to point a radio telescope at Jupiter and write a paper about it.