Juno Spacecraft Reveals Spectacular Cyclones At Jupiter's Poles (arstechnica.com) 22
Joe Palca reports via NPR: NASA's Juno spacecraft has spotted giant cyclones swirling at Jupiter's north and south poles. That's just one of the unexpected and puzzling findings being reported by the Juno science team. Juno arrived at Jupiter last summer. It's the first spacecraft to get a close-up look at the planet's poles. It's in an orbit that takes it skimming close to the cloud tops of the gas giant once every 53 days. After each close pass, the spacecraft sends a trove of data back to Earth. Ultimately, scientists will want to understand how these cyclones change over time and whether they form differently in the north and south poles. Another puzzle that Juno is supposed to help solve is whether Jupiter, a gas giant, has a solid core. Another surprise from Juno is the concentration of ammonia in Jupiter's atmosphere. Scientists thought ammonia was most likely distributed evenly throughout the atmosphere. The data show there's more ammonia near the equator than there is at other latitudes.
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Goddamn Poles (Score:1)
Are these God damn Poles everywhere now?
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Jupiter for the Jupiterians !
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Jupiter for the Jupiterians !
That is not the Jovian consensus.
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No, still only at the north and south of the planet.
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I think it's a yard-ounce per square gallon.
Damned Jovian SUVs. . . (Score:5, Funny)
. . . . causing Jovian Warming!
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A clear example of what the Earth will look like in less than 50 years!
I would say the core is indeed very discreet (Score:3)
"The early data are suggesting the presence of a core," Lunine says. "But not a discreet core. It seems that it's fuzzy." He says more data should help provide a more precise understanding than fuzzy.
The core is being very discreet, hiding under all those clouds so we can't see it, and being very unobtrusive. It's not like it's out there waving itself around for everyone to see. I guess it leaves that to the flashy cloud layers and the Great Red Spot, which is a discrete formation that's been known for some time.
Past collision models (Score:2)
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It doesn't take a lot of brain power to realize all gas giants have a solid core. If a single meteor crashes into it, eventually that meterial makes it's way to the center and yu have a solid core.
Sure, some meteors will fall in. I'm not a physicist so I don't know the answer to this, but how does the mass density of hydrogen compare to other elements at the kind of pressures you get in the interior of a gas giant?
Re: Brain Power (Score:1)
They won't argue that the winds will destroy it, but that it will melt on the way down. Then you have a question of whether the materials chemically separate so that they can stratify or not (Earth's core is separate in part because some minerals and elements will mix with iron while others won't). Those processes depend a lot on temperature and pressure, and we might not be correctly extrapolating to those extremes. There are still questions about what the phase diagram of hydrogen looks like and how it be
Scale? (Score:3)
The caption for the cool picture says "This image shows Jupiter's south pole, as seen by NASA's Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles. The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles in diameter."
With a diameter of ~86,000 mi, some of those ovoids are easily 5000 mi across, not "up to 600mi in diameter" - am I missing something, or are they only talking about teeny circles? Or did they just drop a zero?
Artistically, this looks beautiful (Score:2)
What a freaky cool looking event... series of events. That so very much doesn't look like the Jupiter I am familiar with. It's just fascinating. Now to read up on the science behind it to really enjoy this discovery completely.