The planet Jupiter has no stable floor – no floor, just like the grass or grime you tread right here on Earth. There’s nothing to stroll on, and no place to land a spaceship.
However how can that be? If Jupiter would not have a floor, what does it have? How can it maintain collectively?
Whilst a professor of physics who research every kind of bizarre phenomena, I notice the idea of a world with no floor is troublesome to fathom. But a lot about Jupiter stays a thriller, whilst NASA’s robotic probe Juno begins its ninth yr orbiting this unusual planet.
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First, some facts
Jupiter, the fifth planet from the Sun, is between Mars and Saturn. It is the most important planet within the photo voltaic system, large enough for greater than 1,000 Earths to suit inside, with room to spare.
Whereas the 4 interior planets of the photo voltaic system – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars – are all made from stable, rocky materials, Jupiter is a gasoline big with a composition just like the Solar; it is a roiling, stormy, wildly turbulent ball of gasoline. Some locations on Jupiter have winds of greater than 400 mph (about 640 kilometers per hour), about 3 times quicker than a Class 5 hurricane on Earth.
Trying to find stable floor
Begin from the highest of Earth’s environment, go down about 60 miles (roughly 100 kilometers), and the air strain repeatedly will increase. In the end you hit Earth’s floor, both land or water.
Evaluate that with Jupiter: Begin close to the highest of its largely hydrogen and helium environment, and like on Earth, the strain will increase the deeper you go. However on Jupiter, the strain is immense.
Because the layers of gasoline above you push down increasingly, it is like being on the backside of the ocean – however as a substitute of water, you are surrounded by gasoline. The strain turns into so intense that the human physique would implode; you’ll be squashed.
Go down 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers), and the recent, dense gasoline begins to behave surprisingly. Finally, the gasoline turns right into a type of liquid hydrogen, creating what might be considered the most important ocean within the photo voltaic system, albeit an ocean with out water.
Go down one other 20,000 miles (about 32,000 kilometers), and the hydrogen turns into extra like flowing liquid steel, a fabric so unique that solely not too long ago, and with nice problem, have scientists reproduced it within the laboratory. The atoms on this liquid metallic hydrogen are squeezed so tightly that its electrons are free to roam.
Needless to say these layer transitions are gradual, not abrupt; the transition from regular hydrogen gasoline to liquid hydrogen after which to metallic hydrogen occurs slowly and easily. At no level is there a pointy boundary, stable materials or floor.
Scary to the core
In the end, you’d attain the core of Jupiter. That is the central area of Jupiter’s inside, and to not be confused with a floor.
Scientists are nonetheless debating the actual nature of the core’s materials. Essentially the most favored mannequin: It is not stable, like rock, however extra like a sizzling, dense and presumably metallic combination of liquid and stable.
The strain at Jupiter’s core is so immense that it might be like 100 million Earth atmospheres urgent down on you – or two Empire State buildings on prime of every sq. inch of your physique.
However strain would not be your solely downside. A spacecraft attempting to achieve Jupiter’s core can be melted by the intense warmth – 35,000 levels Fahrenheit (20,000 levels Celsius). That is 3 times hotter than the floor of the Solar.
Jupiter helps Earth
Jupiter is a bizarre and forbidding place. But when Jupiter weren’t round, it is attainable human beings may not exist.
That is as a result of Jupiter acts as a defend for the interior planets of the photo voltaic system, together with Earth. With its large gravitational pull, Jupiter has altered the orbit of asteroids and comets for billions of years.
With out Jupiter’s intervention, a few of that area particles might have crashed into Earth; if one had been a cataclysmic collision, it might have induced an extinction-level occasion. Simply take a look at what occurred to the dinosaurs.
Perhaps Jupiter gave an help to our existence, however the planet itself is awfully inhospitable to life – no less than, life as we all know it.
The identical shouldn’t be the case with a Jupiter moon, Europa, maybe our greatest probability to search out life elsewhere within the photo voltaic system.
NASA’s Europa Clipper, a robotic probe launching in October 2024, is scheduled to do about 50 fly-bys over that moon to examine its huge underground ocean.
May one thing be residing in Europa’s water? Scientists will not know for some time. Due to Jupiter’s distance from Earth, the probe will not arrive till April 2030.
Benjamin Roulston, Assistant Professor of Physics, Clarkson College
This text is republished from The Dialog beneath a Inventive Commons license. Learn the unique article.
