What's Happening Inside Jupiter?
What's happening inside Jupiter? If our galaxy was a Country, our solar system would be an amazing attraction point for tourism. Starting from the outside of it, a visitor could enjoy the presence of Neptune and Uranus, two blue shaded planets, so similar but at the same time so different from each other. One could, for example, organize a quick trip to Triton, the biggest Neptune's satellite, and learn that this moon was probably captured by the planet itself, in the past. One could study the solar system's history. Then, if one came closer towards the Sun, he could see Saturn. It is a real art masterpiece. I mean, look at it. Its beautiful rings are literally out of this world. With its unique shape, I'm pretty sure it would be the Mona Lisa of our solar system. One could organize a trip toward Saturn in order to appreciate countless small and big particles that make up its rings, and he would realize they are made almost entirely of water and ice, with a trace component of rocky material. Then, one could visit Mars and say hi to rovers walking on its reddish surface, and finally, he would reach the Earth. This would be one of the most romantic stops, for sure.
He could see the Moon and he could taste some ice cream while listening to Queen. And last but not least, our guests could visit Venus and Mercury. However, if our solar system was a city, the most known attraction would be Jupiter. It is enormous. It is monumental. If our solar system was Paris, Jupiter would probably be its Eiffel Tower, or if it was Rome, Jupiter would be our Colosseum. What are you waiting for? Let's book some tickets. I'll be your guide for today, and I'll show you the secrets of the gaseous giant. In particular, what's inside of Jupiter? Follow me to get to know more about it. In ancient Roman culture, Jupiter was the god of the sky and thunder. King of all gods, it has a special place in the Roman religion and Mythology. Romans were regarding Jupiter as the equivalent of the Greek Zeus. In fact, in Latin literature and Roman art, the myths of Zeus are adapted under the name of Jupiter. Jupiter was Neptune's brother, the Roman equivalent for Poseidon, the god of the sea. Ancient Romans knew a lot of things about astronomy, but they didn't have telescopes yet. So they studied the things they could. They used their naked eye as an instrument to understand the cosmos. They knew that some of the bright spots in the sky had pretty unique features. They were 5 and seemed pretty different from stars. They called them Saturn, Mars, Venus, Mercury and Jupiter. These planets were given their names thousands of years ago. The other planets in our solar system were not discovered until much later when telescopes were finally invented. But even then, the tradition of naming the planets after Roman gods and goddesses continued. Even nowadays, if you go out and take a look at the night sky, you can notice there are some bright spots that, unlike stars, don't twinkle. This is a pretty good way to recognize a planet in the sky. In these conditions, given a planet, you can track its trajectory in the sky and, with some effort, you can tell how many days it takes in order to complete an orbit around the sun, namely, its orbital period. But besides that, you can't really tell how beautiful and mysterious a planet is.
You can't see features on its surface, and you cannot tell if there are some moon-like satellites orbiting around it. You can just treat it as it is a point in the sky because your naked eye is limited. That's why you need to develop some instruments, and that's exactly what humanity did, starting from 1600. The history of the telescope can be traced to before the invention of the earliest known telescope, which appeared in 1608 in the Netherlands when a patent was submitted by Hans Lippershey, an eyeglass maker. Although Lippershey did not receive his patent, news of the invention soon spread across Europe. The design of these early refracting telescopes consisted of a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece. Galileo improved on this design the following year and applied it to astronomy. In 1611, Johannes Kepler described how a far more useful telescope could be made with a convex objective lens and a convex eyepiece lens. With the help of such instruments, we were finally able to reveal new features of planets and to see further. The telescope is an artificial extension of our eyes. With its help, today we know that Jupiter looks like this: (show pictures of Jupiter) And that it has some moons orbiting around it. (show pictures of Jupiter with Galilean satellites) The most famous ones are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, in order of distance from the gaseous planet. Thanks to new technologies and theories, today we know that Jupiter is the grandest planet in our Solar system. Eleven Earths could fit across Jupiter's equator! If Earth were the size of a grape, Jupiter would be the size of a basketball. We also know that it is the fifth planet from our star. It orbits about 484 million miles (778 million kilometres) or 5.2 astronomical units from our Sun. For a definition, Earth lies at 1 AU from the Sun. We also know from kinematic studies that Jupiter has short days and long years. In fact, it rotates once about every 10 hours, which we call Jovian day, but it takes about 12 Earth Years to complete one orbit of the Sun. The days are much much shorter on Jupiter, but the age on your ID card would be much much less. If you are 36, congrats! You're 3 jovian years old. Another important thing that we know about Jupiter is that, despite the fact that is a massive world, its elements are light. Its atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen and Helium. Is this all that we know? Of course, not. We know Jupiter likes moons, and he owns more than 75 of them. We also know that it is a ringed world, just as Saturn. All four giant planets in our solar system do have ring systems: unlike Saturn, you just have to look closer and at higher resolutions in order to see them. The number of spacecraft that have visited Jupiter during the years is 9. Seven of them flew by and two of them have orbited the gas giant.
The most recent one, Juno, arrived at Jupiter in 2016 and it is still at work. Among other things, we know that Jupiter has a unique red spot on it. It is called Great Red Spot, and today we know it is a gigantic storm that's about twice the size of Earth and has raged for over a century. The Great Red Spot may have existed since before 1665, but it could also be the case that the present spot was first seen only in 1830, and well-studied only after a prominent apparition in 1879. The storm that was seen in the 17th century may have been different from the storm that exists today. A long gap separates its period of current study after 1830 from its 17th-century discovery. Whether the original spot dissipated and reformed, whether it faded, or if the observational record was simply poor is unknown For example, the first sighting of the Great Red Spot is often credited to Robert Hooke, who described a spot on the planet in May 1664. However, it is likely that Hooke's spot was in another belt altogether. Much more convincing is Giovanni Cassini's description of a "permanent spot" the following year. With fluctuations in invisibility, Cassini's spot was observed from 1665 to 1713, but the 118-year observational gap makes the identity of the two spots inconclusive. The older spot's shorter observational history and slower motion than the modern spot make it difficult to conclude that they are the same. Okay, but...what about the things we don't know? Is there something we are missing about Jupiter? For example, we don't know very well what's going on inside Jupiter. Jupiter is characterized by a frosty cold, but the temperature near the centre heat up to over 43.000 degrees Fahrenheit. But how do these drastic temperature differences actually arise? As we've said before, this enormous gas giant is composed almost exclusively of helium and hydrogen. Normally, these chemical elements exist in a gaseous state of aggregation, but it actually depends on temperature and pressure.
Sometimes hydrogen can be exposed to high temperatures and pressures. In that case, he liquefies. Have you ever been scuba diving? If you have, you have experienced firsthand how the pressure differences play out in reality. The deeper you dive into the sea, the more water masses there are above you. This pressure weighs on you, and it's the same for Hydrogen particles in the atmosphere of a planet when the pressure rises. At low pressure, the molecules possess sufficient space to distribute themselves all over the layers, but when the pressure is really high they don't have space and start to slow, squeeze and combine together They lose their gaseous state and become liquid. The pressure level in the centre of Jupiter reaches an enormous value of about 100.000 bar. At Jupiter's core, you would feel as much as 650 million pounds of pressure pressing down on every square inch of your body. That would be like having approximately 160,000 cars stacked up in every direction all over your body! Jupiter is a remarkably different world from our own. With all that gravity, normally lightweight hydrogen behaves in completely exotic ways. How does it translate in terms of the core? Is the core a solid one? Or a liquid one? Experts believe these extreme conditions led to the formation of a solid planetary core. But this is still a matter of debate because an alternative hypothesis is that the centre of the gas giant isn't a solid structure. In fact, according to some scientists, the core is a liquefied accumulation of boiling hot material. However, if it has a solid inner core at all, it’s likely only about the size of Earth. So in short terms: we think we have two options: the first one is that the core of Jupiter is a solid one. The second hypothesis is that Jupiter has a boiling hot soup inside of it. NASA's Juno mission is designed to find answers to such remaining questions about Jupiter. The spacecraft is orbiting the giant planet, swooping in for close-up looks to get more detailed information. It successfully entered the orbit of Jupiter on July 4, 2016, will for the first time peer below the dense cover of clouds to answer questions about the gas giant and the origins of our solar system. Juno's primary goal is also to reveal the story of Jupiter's formation and evolution. Using long-proven technologies on a spinning spacecraft placed in an elliptical polar orbit, Juno will observe Jupiter's gravity and magnetic fields, atmospheric dynamics and composition, and evolution. Juno has already made many new discoveries about Jupiter. Scientists hope that information will help us measure Jupiter's mass and figure out whether or not the giant planet's core is solid. Let's resume what we learnt about Jupiter and its internal structure. The composition of Jupiter is similar to that of the Sun: mostly hydrogen and helium. Deep in the atmosphere, pressure and temperature increase, compressing the hydrogen gas into a liquid. Scientists think that, at depths perhaps halfway to the planet's centre, the pressure becomes so great that electrons are squeezed off the hydrogen atoms. Its fast rotation is thought to drive electrical currents in this region, generating the planet's powerful magnetic field. It is still unclear if deeper down, Jupiter has a central core of solid material or if it may be a thick, super-hot and dense soup.
NASA Finally Shows What's Inside Jupiter's Great Red Spot
When it comes to Jupiter, how can one miss the mighty great red spot? The largest planet in the solar system hosts the biggest and the most violent storm known to date. We don't really know for how long it has been there on Jupiter, but it has been raging since Robert Hooke first discovered it through his telescope back in 1664. Over the years, several missions have explored this mighty storm on Jupiter. During their brief flybys, space probes such as Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and the Cassini spacecraft studied it. From Earth, the Hubble space telescope has been making observations of Jupiter and the Great Red Spot. Recently, data from Hubble suggested that the spot is shrinking. The storm was once big enough to engulf three Earth-sized planets inside it. Today, it can fit just over one Earth-sized planet. Not only that, the storm has sped up over the last decade. Hubble's data from 2008 to 2020 showed that the wind speeds at the edges of the Great Red Spot have increased by 8%. The anticyclone has also changed its shape, going from oval to circular. Making detailed observations of the Great Red Spot from Earth is challenging. Even the biggest telescopes on Earth or the ones in space can probe the storm only up to some extent. To really see what's happening inside the storm, we need to visit Jupiter and make continuous observations. And this is exactly what NASA's Juno spacecraft has been doing. Juno was launched in 2011 and reached Jupiter five years later. It has been orbiting the planet and continuously exploring Jupiter's magnetosphere, cloud tops, radiation belts, and the composition of its moons. Juno is a mission full of daring assignments. But, unfortunately, Jupiter's deadly radiations make it extremely difficult for spacecraft to get too close to the planet. However, after five years of observations, Juno has revealed what lies beneath the thick clouds of Jupiter, and particularly inside the great red spot. As it turns out, Jupiter's great red spot is not only wide but goes way deeper into the planet, more than anyone had expected. Data from NASA's Juno spacecraft has shown that the behemoth storm extends as much as 310 miles (500 kilometers) beneath Jupiter's cloud tops. How deep is that? Well, it's as tall as the International Space Station is above the surface of our planet.
This means if a storm that tall raged on Earth, its upper end would be at the ISS, 500 km above us. So now the interesting question is, how did scientists measure the depth of the Great Red Spot, and what did they see happening in there? What if I told you you could ask about any problem from your book and get its solution instantaneously? You heard that right. See, it's vital to know the pattern of exams before entering the exam hall. Coming back to Jupiter, these findings come from two teams of researchers. One team measured the Great Red Spot's gravity. They wanted to know if the storm's gravity was influencing Jupiter in any way. The idea was simple. Juno's Gravity Science Instrument was turned to the 16,000 km wide storm to see if it left behind any fingerprints on Jupiter's gravitational field. This assignment was not a part of the original Juno proposal. However, investigating a planet's gravity to study its atmosphere is not new. A couple of NASA satellites have done the same on Earth. Gravity instruments can also see deeper into the atmosphere than other instruments tend to see. This just had never been done with the Great Red Spot. The assignment was a gamble. Scientists were not sure that they would find something substantial. The Great Red Spot might be a giant, but it's a drop in the bucket of Jupiter's total mass. But the researchers did indeed pick up fluctuations in Jupiter's gravitational field, enough for them to get a handle on the storm's depth: 500 km. And the great storm seems to be fed by jets that reach far deeper — as much as 3,000 km. While the first team probed the spot by making gravitational measurements, the second team explored the storm using Juno's microwave radiometer.
It's an instrument that probes the planet's atmosphere with microwaves. These scientists wanted to look deep into the storm to see how it ticked vertically. They found that the Great Red Spot and other such storms on Jupiter stretch far down, with precipitation and drafts at unprecedented depths. In addition, they found signatures of these phenomena below Jupiter's cloud level, beneath which the ammonia and water in the atmosphere are expected to condense. Together, the gravity and microwave measurements hint that Jupiter's upper atmosphere is meaningfully connected to these depths. The Great Red Spot is actually an anticyclone raging on Jupiter. The planet is home to several similar cyclones and anticyclones. The new results show that the cyclones are warmer on top, with lower atmospheric densities, while they are colder at the bottom, with higher densities. In contrast, anticyclones, which rotate in the opposite direction, are colder at the top but warmer at the bottom. In addition to cyclones and anticyclones, Jupiter is known for its distinctive belts and zones – white and reddish bands of clouds that wrap around the planet. Strong east-west winds moving in opposite directions separate the bands. Juno previously discovered that these winds, or jet streams, reach depths of about 3,200 km. Researchers are still trying to solve the mystery of how jet streams form. However, data collected by Juno's instruments during multiple passes reveal one possible clue: that the atmosphere's ammonia gas travels up and down in remarkable alignment with the observed jet streams. NASA's Juno spacecraft has been making continuous observations of Jupiter since 2016. In 2021, the mission received a 5-year extension. If all goes according to plan, Juno's orbital path will move to take the probe over the planet's north pole — and away from the Great Red Spot, which is farther south. But Juno's instruments will get the chance to watch other curiosities, such as Jupiter's cryptic polar cyclones and the four Galilean Moons. Jupiter holds the secrets of the early solar system, and exploring the planet is crucial to understanding how the solar system really formed.
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