Is Jupiter Dissolving Its Rocky Core? 181
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by
Soulskill
from the told-you-not-to-drink-all-that-soda-pop dept.
from the told-you-not-to-drink-all-that-soda-pop dept.
sciencehabit writes "Jupiter is the victim of its own success. Sophisticated new calculations indicate that our solar system's largest planet, which weighs more than twice as much as all of the others put together, has destroyed part of its central core. The culprit is the very hydrogen and helium that made Jupiter a gas giant, when the core's gravity attracted these elements as the planet formed. The finding suggests that the most massive extrasolar planets have no cores at all."
Diamonds are Forever (Score:2)
Re:Diamonds are Forever (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly DeBeers needs to hire you to lead their next ad campaign, "Diamonds are quite long-lasting relative to other materials, though they will eventually decay".
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I propose "Diamonds may not last forever, but it is likely it will last longer than your relationship to the person you are giving one to" be their new slogan.
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I'm not so sure about everything decaying over time. I thought everything decayed over time to its most-stable state; once a material was in that state, then theoretically it shouldn't decay any more, right?
The most-stable state for carbon is graphite I believe. So diamonds will eventually decay into pencil lead. But once they've turned into graphite, I don't think they'll decay any more.
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In a long time, it will decay into iron.
Unless the Big Rip comes earlier, then it will be no more.
Re:Diamonds are Forever (Score:5, Informative)
Through fusion, lighter elements like hydrogen and lithium may be combined (nuclear). This process will provide a net energy output up to "iron."
Through fission, heavier elements may be disassociated (nuclear). This process will provide net energy output down to "iron."
When all you have left is iron, making something else via nuclear methods requires the addition of energy. Thus, "everything decays to iron" represents a lowest energy state from a nuclear perspective. But don't worry, the heat death of the universe [wikipedia.org] won't happen for a long while.
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Entropy always increases.
A diamond is a very ordered configuration which will become progressively more disordered. Its configuration may mean that the reactions that alter it (with the oxygen of the air, by example, or even a dislocation of carbon atoms inside the structure) work very slowly, but in the end when these happen there is no turning back.
So, little by little the diamond is decaying into carbon, CO2, etc.
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Of course, this decay of diamonds doesn't have to be slow; a blow-torch will speed it up quite a bit:
http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2009-08/burn-diamonds-torch-and-liquid-oxygen [popsci.com]
Note that cubic zirconia is immune to blow-torches, plus it costs less and looks better.
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You're right that there's no monopoly artificially keeping up the price of CZ, but you can always show off your wealth with stones that are actually rare, and don't need a monopoly to keep their prices up artificially. I believe emeralds are a good example of this. However, I've never heard of any wars over them (nor have I heard the term "conflict emeralds"), so you would be missing out on that by buying them. This is probably why you don't hear much about Emeralds; American women want overpriced stones
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Yeah get rid of that old core (Score:3, Funny)
get at least a quad core... time for an upgrade haha :)
Monoliths (Score:5, Funny)
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I believe there is a paper that describes how to trigger a self sustaining fusion reaction in Jupiter's atmosphere. I believe the paper was triggered by 2001 when it came out. I am an ineptly erased slate for anything I experienced prior to 2000 so ...
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Have a look here:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/jupiter_galileo.html [badastronomy.com]
Apparently Jupiter has 1/80th the necessary mass that is needed to become a star. Even if Jupiter were to combine with Saturn it would still lacks the necessary mass to "ignite".
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Sufficiently advanced technology.
Weight? (Score:2, Insightful)
"which weighs more than twice as much as all of the others put together"
I wonder if this guess is still correct. I would assume this weight was appropriated by assuming the planet had a solid core?
Re:Weight? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, but it does wonders for it's weight.
Also, you can't really use the term "weight" for a planetary core. Since the core is at the center of gravity, it has no weight whatsoever. Well, except for towards the Sun, I suppose. Not sure if TFS would be correct or not about the weight in that respect.
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readers who actually have some science education should be infer to understand what they really mean
is not well-formed.
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Unlike the dickish AC, you actually pointed out the problem. In my rush, I left out the words "able to".
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That and under that tempiture and pressure we are talking about a liquide very unlike any liquide we normally deal with.
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Re:Weight? (Score:5, Funny)
Next thing you'll tell me is that a pound of feathers weighs as much of a pound of bricks!
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Go (get a) pound (of) sand?
Re:Weight? (Score:5, Funny)
> GO POUND SAND
The pound sand doesn't appear to have an entrance.
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Re:Weight? (Score:5, Interesting)
You do realize that liquid rock has the exact same mass as solid, right?
That's mostly correct, but as heat is a form of energy and E=mc^2, a rock changed into liquid state would mean that it weighs oh-so-slightly more. For some napkin calculations: the specific heat of iron (at 273 K) is 0.45 J/(K g) meaning that if we had a thousand tons of iron (1E9 g) and increased the temperature 1000 K then the increase of mass would be: 0.45*1E9*1000/(3E8)^2 = 5E-3 g. All that mass and energy for a full 5 milligrams, which is why it's mostly negligible
Disclaimer: I know that the specific heat changes (quite a bit) with temperature but I wanted to keep the example simple.
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Did not read the original article, but I would assume that it likely changed it density as well.
Meaning that lots of liquid core could have been pushed to the surface making the planet appear bigger and more massive from the outside.
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Probably not. The density of the core decreases, but the density remains pretty high. (The pressure is high enough to liquify hydrogen at a reasonable temperature.) And while the core has now disappeared, there is a larger volume of denser liquid.
Besides, what you see when you look at a gas giant is the atmosphere. That's not going to change measurably.
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You do realize that liquid rock has the exact same mass as solid, right?
To be perfectly technical, no it does not. Molecular bonds and heat have mass too...
Re:Weight? (Score:5, Informative)
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Nope.
We "weigh" planets by observing the gravitational force acting on a space craft (whose mass we know) we send close to them. Or by measuring the mass of something else (say by observing a space craft near it) and then observing how it interacts gravitationaly with the planet in question.
You can also do some math with pulsar timings to see periodic errors due to the barycenter of the solar system not being exactly where you thought - which will also give you the planetary masses (well the planet plus th
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Yeah you'd have to be an idiot (such as myself) to not see the obvious:
m1 is the mass of the planet. m2 is the mass of the satellite.
F = G.m1.m2/r^2 * Thanks Newton.
F = m2.a * Thanks Newton again
m2.a = G.m1.m2/r^2
a = G.m1/r^2
m1 = a.r^2/G
Since we know G and the orbit of the satellite gives us r and a we can determine m1. Of course since the orbit isn't going to be a perfect circle there's some details I can't be bothered to think about :)
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weight is really easy to figure out, or what I'm assuming you're talking about, mass, since it produces the easily observable effect of gravity
Remember that "weight" is the effect of gravitational attraction between separate bodies that possess mass. You can't talk about "weight" unless you're referring to at least two objects. (usually with great differences in mass, such as a planet and an object on said planet)
did it ever have a core? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I know, that question was still open to at least some debate. It's hypothesized that there should be a solid core based on the mineral composition and some simulations, but I don't believe there's any direct evidence of it, at least until the mission (mentioned in the article) to measure its gravitational field with an orbiting probe reaches it.
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As far as I know, that question was still open to at least some debate. It's hypothesized that there should be a solid core based on the mineral composition and some simulations, but I don't believe there's any direct evidence of it, at least until the mission (mentioned in the article) to measure its gravitational field with an orbiting probe reaches it.
Wouldn't that apply to Earth's core as well? I mean, as far as I'm aware no one has ever drilled all the way to the center of the planet, so what evidence (beyond hypothesis) is there that Earth's core is what we think it is?
Re:did it ever have a core? (Score:4, Informative)
There's some evidence beyond only mineral composition for the earth's core, mostly from seismic data; the discontinuities observed in seismic wave travel put constraints on what has to be the case at different layers. At least, it's more data than we have about the interior of Jupiter, which afaik is entirely based on mineral composition and modeling.
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There's some evidence beyond only mineral composition for the earth's core, mostly from seismic data; the discontinuities observed in seismic wave travel put constraints on what has to be the case at different layers. At least, it's more data than we have about the interior of Jupiter, which afaik is entirely based on mineral composition and modeling.
Some data comes from detailed magnetic field monitoring, makes sense since it seems to be the cause of the earths magnetic field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_core#Dynamics [wikipedia.org]
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Isn't it theorized by some that the pressure is high enough in Jupiter that the hydrogen is metallic? Does anyone really understand the metallurgy of metallic hydrogen?
core is icey hot? (Score:2)
...central core made of iron, rock, and ice. .... The temperature there is approximately 16,000 kelvin—hotter than the surface of our sun....
Okay, maybe ice means something else on Jupiter. Can someone explain how Jupiter's core can have ice that doesn't melt?
Re:core is icey hot? (Score:4, Informative)
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There is alot of pressure at the core of Jupiter.
That's nothing compared to being the core of Saturn. You scrub and scrub and scrub and nothing gets rid of those rings, and then Neptune comes home and wants his dinner and doesn't understand that you've been working hard all day. 'Get me a beer!' he hollers as he plops his ass down into the big comfy chair and starts watching Wheel of Fortune.
I tell 'ya, being the core of a planet ain't all wine and roses, I tell 'ya.
Re:core is icey hot? (Score:4, Interesting)
High pressure from all that mass, possibly? [wikimedia.org] Just speculating here.
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it'll either be clearly ice at that pressure or near another melting line.
You do remember that solid water is less dense than liquid water, right?
It is possible to melt ice merely by increasing pressure.
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To correct myself, water in the highest pressure areas of the core would actually be an ice, but in a different phase than the one we are familiar with everyday
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phase_diagram_of_water.svg [wikipedia.org]
It appears even at 10GPa we would actually expect a liquid phase.
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...central core made of iron, rock, and ice. .... The temperature there is approximately 16,000 kelvin—hotter than the surface of our sun....
Okay, maybe ice means something else on Jupiter. Can someone explain how Jupiter's core can have ice that doesn't melt?
Pressure.
rescue mission to the core? (Score:3)
It wasn't us! (Score:2)
âZ"We're pretty sure it has nothing to do with our decision to smash a huge plutonium powered space probe into it or with the resulting huge purple 'second spot' caused by the resulting plume, which was so large it was visible to backyard telescopes and in general was a sort of shocking embarrassment to NASA when it occured."
"No, this disintegration now suddenly occuring just a few years after that incident has nothing to do with us. Jupiter was in the middle of killing itself, anyways. It was only a m
Silica? (Score:2)
What happens to the silica? From my skimming of TFA, it appears that the experiment only involves the dissolution of the MgO component. There should still be gobs of MgSiO3 (or at the very least SiO2, if the MgSiO3 breaks down into its constituent oxides at the high pressures) hanging around down there.
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According to TFA, the MgSiO3 dissociates into SiO2 and MgO under Jovian core conditions. They don't calculate what happens to the SiO2, but assume that its solubility is similar to the MgO component. So that would mean that the SiO2 also goes into solution in the Jovian core.
Also of interest (at least to me) but not addressed in this paper is what happens to the nickel-iron component of the core. Perhaps they figure Jovians don't have enough to worry about, since they form so far from the center of the prot
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That's a good point about the iron. There should be some, but at a far lower abundance than the silicates. Still, we're probably talking a few Earth masses of metal (real, actual metal, not what astrophysicists call metal).
I did notice that they speculated that the SiO2 should also dissolve, but I don't really know how valid that assumption is.
It's official (Score:5, Funny)
Jupiter is no longer hard core.
Last to know.... (Score:2)
My guess is that in the lengthy process that a solar system and/or planet evolves, in which we know nothing about, but can only theorize (as no one has ever lived long enough to see a planet go from a to z), is it possible that there was a core, but the core now has disappeared(on purpose) and that this will create a small vacuum where by the gasses will draw inwards and create a molten core, which in turn will start forming an earth like planet at a much smaller scale, so the large becomes small, and habit
Re:Ho Hum (Score:5, Insightful)
Alas our current US government has sought to sink our space program so it will need to wait for another day.
You mean when they cancelled shuttle-derived boondoggle money pits?
That's actually the best way to *increase* the resources available to do real the planetary science you're talking about.
Re:Ho Hum (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad to see the shuttle no longer leeching the life out of NASA, but you have to know the cuts go well beyond that. It's not like ditching the shuttle actually freed up more funds for NASA. Bankers need their bonuses far more than we need to do basic science, after all.
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NASA does basic science?
Your bar is set...ridiculously high.
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Well, let me know when the first spaceship launched by Virgin starts off towards another planet then.
That toy for the rich is just as much of a silly stunt as NASA's cancelled rockets (only a lot cheaper).
For decades, commercial off-the-shelf rockets have been available to launch serious science payloads throughout the solar system. New commercial ventures are bringing lower-cost versions of the same as we speak. At this point, NASA shouldn't be spending a single dime on launch technology. Any such spending only detracts from their scientific goals.
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"For decades, commercial off-the-shelf rockets have been available to launch serious science payloads throughout the solar system."
silly citation needed meme inserted here
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Prolly not, I hear Alzheimer's in 5-digit UIDs is rising.
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At this point, NASA shouldn't be spending a single dime on launch technology. Any such spending only detracts from their scientific goals.
Well, there is no harm in them spending money on true blue-sky research - the sort of thing that is less likely to get done by a commercial entity. Of course, you can do that with small rockets/etc - you don't need to build huge rockets to test a concept. If they figure out how to get payloads to orbit for $1M or something then maybe they can build a proof-of-concept, though at that price I suspect that private industry would be more than willing to test it out unproven.
However, I agree that there is no v
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and it also helps to keep our atmosphere in tact
Id never heard of this, can you explain? I had always understood that to be simply because of gravity. I knew the core was supposed to be the cause of our magnetosphere, but thats it.
Re:Ho Hum (Score:5, Informative)
The Magnetosphere helps keep solar winds from stripping our atmosphere away from us.
Re:Ho Hum (Score:5, Informative)
I knew the core was supposed to be the cause of our magnetosphere
That's a large part of the answer right there! The magnetosphere acts as a shield to keep a lot of harmful particles from the solar wind away, things which would work to strip away the atmosphere. Mars is an example of what can happen to planets that lack this. (Obviously, Mars' lower gravity works against it in this regard as well)
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast31jan_1/ [nasa.gov]
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OtakuBooty.com [otakubooty.com]: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Pick two.
Re:Ho Hum (Score:5, Insightful)
Then how does Venus, which has almost no magnetic field manage to retain a very dense atmosphere?
Re:Ho Hum (Score:5, Informative)
Look at the composition.
Venus's atmosphere is very low in certain molecules.
Nitrogen.
Elemental oxygen.
Water vapor
Et al.
What it is high in, are comparatively dense gasses.
Sulfuric acid
Carbon dioxide
Etc.
The solar wind is highly energetic, but is comprised of small atomic mass particles. They lack the kinetic energy to strip away very heavy gasses with strong intermolecular forces. Water, while having strong intermolecular forces, is a very light molecule, and the high energy particles have sufficient energy to break the single covalent bonds that hold it together. This means the cosmic wind rips it apart, and then scours it out into space. Sulfuric acid and cabron dioxide, on the other hand, are very heavy, gravitate deeper into the gravity well, and in the case of co2, have double covalent bonds that are quite powerful. The solar wind doesn't have enough oomph to rip it apart, and the molecules are too heavy to easily blow away.
Mar's armosphere is actually sabotaged by a weak and incomplete magnetic field. It has many small and weak diploles extending from the surface. Under the influence of the solar wind, this actually pinches off large chunks of atmosphere during heavy flares from the sun. This is why mars has such a pronounced atmospheric loss, compared to venus, which doesn't have any discernable mgnetic field at all. If you note, the atmosphere mars does have is comprised of what? Co2.
Re:Ho Hum (Score:5, Funny)
Mar's
Never has an apostrophe made me so sad.
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You should sic Bob [angryflower.com] on him. It's probably not an accurate appraisal, but I always question the education, and maybe even intelligence, of anyone who can't use that simple punctuation mark properly.
What's worse, I see it more and more. Doesn't anyone read books these days?
Re:Ho Hum (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahhh.. Slashdot. Where commenting about a misplaced apostrophe in an otherwise seemingly salient post is somehow more important than the subject the poster was writing about.
It doesn't matter that they were actually right or not. They dared to misuse an apostrophe. That makes them wrong. ;)
We won't even get into what happens when someone misuses a coma, or uses the wrong phoneme... there might be children present!
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They dared to misuse an apostrophe. That makes them wrong. ;)
No, it marks them as uneducated and likely not very intelligent. Same with phoneme misuse. I can't take someone who writes like a ten year old seriously.
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"They lack the kinetic energy to strip away very heavy gasses with strong intermolecular forces."
But they possess more than enough energy potential to still split apart heavier molecules into lighter constituents.
UV radiation alone can do this, especially in the UVC range (which our atmosphere happens to filter out due to water.)
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Total mass, yes. Percentage wise, not even close.
The vast majority of interaction will be with the resilient and heavy co2 molecule, and not the much ligher n2 molecule.
That does not mean venus is not losing nitrogen to solar wind, it means the heavy percentage of c02 greatly reduces rate of loss.
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Venus's ionosphere creates an induced magnetosphere. It's not as good as the one we have, but it does enough to keep the entire atmosphere from being blown away.
venus has an induced magnetosphere (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus%23Induced_magnetosphere [wikipedia.org]
Re:Ho Hum (Score:5, Informative)
We know A LOT about the cores of the planets in the solar system from extensive study (including molten, material and other stuff that can be determined from external study). It appears you are talking about examining extrasolar planets. We don't have the capability, and it's doubtful we will, at least in our lifetime. Voyager1 just left the solar system and it's moving at ~35k MPH and it was launched in the 70's, most of the people that designed it are retired or dead and Voyager1 will be dead long before it reaches any other star.
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Buzzkill
Re:Ho Hum (Score:5, Informative)
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Which brings up the question: Which will happen first? Earth's core cooling to the point where we lose our atmosphere, or the Sun running out of fuel to the point where Earth can no longer sustain life (as we like it)?
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Which brings up the question: Which will happen first? Earth's core cooling to the point where we lose our atmosphere, or the Sun running out of fuel to the point where Earth can no longer sustain life (as we like it)?
The correct answer is neither. Both of those are billions of years in the future. You forgot about a more immediate threat to the planet. Unless something drastic happens, the Human race will have made the earth devoid of life long before that. And even if we don't f' the planet up beyond all fixing, it wont matter because humans will either be extinct or will have colonized the galaxy by then.
Elementary how to fix it (Score:5, Funny)
We'll send special ships to the center of the earth with large hydrogen bombs that will restart the rotation of the core itself.
This is all documented here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Core [wikipedia.org]
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Pretty sure that Emperor Xenu already tried something like that.
Re:Ho Hum (Score:5, Informative)
Neither. As the sun gets older, it gets brighter (according to wikipedia, about an 10% increase in luminosity every billion years). At some point there will be no more liquid water available because the surface of our planet is too hot. This will happen long before the sun turns into an actual red giant, which in turn will happen long before it runs out of fuel.
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Liquid outer core stirred up by thermal and magnetic turbulence and a solid inner core. The mantle is more-or-less solid.
Now ; it probably had one for a short period early in it's history ; there is some evidence of "magnetic stripes" (and by implication, something resembling sea-floor spreading ?) in the region to the south of the Tharsis volcanoes.(IIRC)
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OK, so it is. I dare you to do something about it.
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You could just repost a version of that objection for almost any piece of science research without immediate applications...
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So nothing that cannot be immediately used to make money is of any interest then?
Rgds
Damon
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So no one should do a PhD to become the world authority on a subject then? No one should try anything new (let's say, for example, a certain chap's musings on the photoelectric effect or relativity)? And by your numbers even spending 0.001 of a single person's time on something not directly productive should be stopped. So let's ban all art and sports (when you've finished off all pure science research), since I have no time for them. And cooking beyond the purely functional, and interior decoration, an
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I care: wasn't that clear from my last answer?
Rgds
Damon
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Well, "we" didn't get there. "We" haven't gone beyond the far end of a low moon orbit a very few times. And we haven't extended our reach in over 40 years. Spacecraft that we built have gone farther. It seems a distinction worth making to me; maybe it's silly. When man ceases to explore in person, and that day may have arrived permanently, he will be something different, in my mind.
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Yo momma so fat, her core dissolved!
Hmm... this one's quite good, actually. :-)