What Lies Beneath Jupiter's Pretty Clouds (nytimes.com) 56
For something that was to have been done and thrown away three years ago, NASA's Juno spacecraft has a busy schedule ahead exploring Jupiter and its big moons. From a report: The spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016, and has survived bombardment from intense radiation at the largest of the solar system's planets. It is now finishing its primary mission, but NASA has granted it a four-year extension and 42 more orbits. Last week, it zipped past Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon. "Basically, we designed and built an armored tank," said Scott J. Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, who is the mission's principal investigator. "And it's worked." Jupiter is essentially a big ball of mostly hydrogen, but it has turned out to be a pretty complicated ball. The mission's discoveries include lightning higher up than thought possible, rings of stable storms at the north and south poles, and winds extending so deep into the interior that they might push around the planet's magnetic fields.
"I think this has been a revelation," said David J. Stevenson, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology and a co-investigator on the mission. Juno's highly elliptical path, pitched up at almost a 90-degree angle to the orbits of Jupiter's moons, passes over the planet's north and south poles. On each orbit, Juno swoops in, reaching a top speed of 130,000 miles per hour as it passes within a few thousand miles of Jupiter's clouds.
"I think this has been a revelation," said David J. Stevenson, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology and a co-investigator on the mission. Juno's highly elliptical path, pitched up at almost a 90-degree angle to the orbits of Jupiter's moons, passes over the planet's north and south poles. On each orbit, Juno swoops in, reaching a top speed of 130,000 miles per hour as it passes within a few thousand miles of Jupiter's clouds.
In the beginning... (Score:3)
The mission's discoveries include lightning higher up than thought possible, rings of stable storms at the north and south poles, and winds extending so deep into the interior that they might push around the planet's magnetic fields.
Some of the dynamics of a proto-sun without the sun.
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Jupiter would need to be much, much larger than it is for it to be even close to the point where the fusion fires would ignite.
Yeah I'll bet if we dropped your mom in it Jupiter would ignite.
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How do you propose we even get her over there? I mean let's be real, she's no moon....
Re:In the beginning... (Score:4, Informative)
Jupiter would need to be much, much larger than it is for it to be even close to the point where the fusion fires would ignite. A proto-star, it is not.
More specifically, it would have to be much more massive to be a star (13X to become a brown dwarf and fuse deuterium, 80X to become an actual star). However, the physical size of all brown dwarfs is roughly the same as Jupiter, since adding more mass just increases the density.
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Re:In the beginning... (Score:5, Interesting)
Jupiter is around 1/70th of the size (mass) of the smallest possible nuclear-burning body, so it's a long way to extrapolate from Jupiter to an actual proto-star. But on the other hand, it is the closest such body there is close enough for detailed study, so it's six versus two-threes.
Real low-mass stars have spectral lines indicating the presence of unusual compounds such as titanium dioxide in their atmospheres, indicating that some interesting chemistry and physics (turbulence, mixing) happens between Jupiter-mass and ignition-mass. So it's not a straight extrapolation.
I thought we already knew this? (Score:2)
From 2017... [phys.org]
Now, find those monoliths and HAL 9000 and then tell me about it.. ;-p
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How is there a right or wrong planet? It's a story, someone made it up. There was never an actual Discovery ship built and sent into space with a sentient computer.
It's a story, get it? I know you space nuts take your stories very seriously, but come on.
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When you mentioned radio I had this sudden flash of imagining "2001..." as a radio play (remember those?). I could not imagine anything so boring, or the total confusion in any listener that tuned in after it had started.
As you may recall, the entire dialog - for a 3 hour movie! - would fit on one sheet of paper. With plenty of room left over for margins.
Hilarious that you mention a "radio version".
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I thought we already knew this?
Easy, killer; Msmash wasn't even alive in 2017 (obviously still isn't but that's another story). What I didn't know was the following:
...winds extending so deep into the interior that they might push around the planet's magnetic fields.
If anything, it's just the opposite [wikipedia.org].
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Discover: 1) to make known or visible 2) to obtain sight or knowledge of for the first time 3) to find by happenstance or searching
Revelation: 1) an act of revealing or making known 2) a pleasant of enlightening surprise
Seems to me that, unlike you, they used the words exactly correctly
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Uh, finding that some paint is peeling IS a discovery (synonyms: detection, finding, spotting, unearthing). What do you call it?
As for revelation, it could be used in either sense here. The spacecraft did indeed reveal the storms, which could have been quite a revelation to the mission team.
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Clearly the genius Slashdot Editor simply forgot the question mark on the end of "What Lies Beneath Jupiter's Pretty Clouds"
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Who pissed in your Cheerios this morning? Sheesh.
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Re:What's the revelation? What are the "discoverie (Score:5, Funny)
gross guy.
That's quite an insult coming from someone whose moniker is essentially "Pee Your Pants."
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Odd, I didn't detect any bitterness in his remark; only a bit of slightly off-color humor. You did just criticize someone for being "overly literal", but I don't believe anyone thought someone had actually urinated in your breakfast cereal. Would you prefer "Who rattled your cage" or "Who yanked your chain", or do you think they imply you're being held in captivity? I wonder what you'd make of "Did something get under your skin?"
I'm pretty sure that when Bart Simpson says, "Don't have a cow, man," he's not
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Interestingly, sometimes little boys are encouraged to piss in (on) Cheerios. [mommity.com]
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It is just an idiom. It doesn't mean the person 'doesn't like something you said', it means your comment is so bitter that something ELSE must be making you angry. Funny you should claim someone else is 'bitter' when it is YOU displaying the bitterness.
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I didn't say it, asshole.
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Revelation seems like other things (Score:2)
I agree the lightning seems more like a discovery, but the things about the lower winds (that can even affect the magnetic fields!) and other things probably not even in the summary seem like they really are revelations...
Re:What's the revelation? What are the "discoverie (Score:5, Informative)
Is finding out that lightning is "higher up than thought possible" considered a revelation and a discovery now?
Yes. Lightning in Jupiter's clouds is thought to form phosphine, explaining the phosphine which has been detected in Jupiter's atmosphere. On Earth, for lack of methane in the atmosphere, lightning does not form phosphine. On Earth, only life forms phosphine in measurable amounts. So confirming more and higher lightning in Jupiter's clouds is important to explain away possible evidence of microbial life in Jupiter's atmosphere. There wasn't quite sufficient lightning observed before to be a satisfactory explanation for the observed levels of phosphine, particularly in Jupiter's upper atmosphere, where it had no business being. Now there is.
Antimatter (Score:2)
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Jupiter's magnetic field may be very big, and contain a lot of energy. But that is not the same at all as being particularly powerful. At 417 microTesla (at the equator) it's about 10 time as strong as that of Earth, but a tenth of the strength of a fridge magnet. I don't detect a huge amount of gamma radiation from the annihilation of antielectrons produced by my fridge m
Re:Antimatter (Score:5, Funny)
>I don't detect a huge amount of gamma radiation from the annihilation of antielectrons produced by my fridge magnets.
you clearly don't understand what *actually* happens when you open the door and light comes on . . .
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Are you sure the light goes off when you close the door?
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And only opening the fridge door while holding a UV lamp.
"My God, it's full of..." (Score:5, Informative)
It appears to be a paywall.
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Now we know why we can't achieve FTL. It's behind a paywall.
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If you pray hard enough, God will let you go faster than light.
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Yeah, try and peak up the robes of the unstable guy with a habit of tossing lightning bolts at anyone interfering with his whims.
Wha could possibly go wrong?
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Zeus mad! Zap!
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q: "What Lies Beneath Jupiter's Pretty Clouds"
a: "It appears to be a paywall."
Consider installing the browser add-on Bypass Paywalls https://github.com/iamadamdev/... [github.com]
It's made life a bit more pleasant for me.
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I bet that addon collects meta-data
I know the answe! (Score:2)
Crappy camera (Score:2)
Since they deliberately put such a crappy camera on Juno we donâ(TM)t have any good idea of cloud structure on Jupiter.
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Radiation resistance isn't easy, the "crappy camera" was the best compromise between radiation hardening, image quality, and processing/storage capabilities of the spacecraft. Unfortunately because of the way Congress budgets they had to go with the one originally spec'd rather than replace it closer to launch time with an improved version. That's what comes from letting lawyers and accountants manage an engineering program.
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The same thing is happening with the Psyche Probe which is using a not-even-HD old camera from the 2000s that even the manufacturer marked as "obsolete" years ago (Kodak KAI-2020).