This text was initially printed at The Dialog. The publication contributed the article to Area.com’s Skilled Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Benjamin Roulston is Assistant Professor of Physics, Clarkson College
The planet Jupiter has no strong floor – no floor, just like the grass or dust 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 doesn’t have a floor, what does it have? How can it maintain collectively?
At the same time as a professor of physics who research all types of bizarre phenomena, I notice the idea of a world with out a floor is troublesome to fathom. But a lot about Jupiter stays a thriller, at the same time as NASA’s robotic probe Juno begins its ninth yr orbiting this unusual planet.
First, some information
Jupiter, the fifth planet from the Solar, is between Mars and Saturn. It’s the biggest planet within the photo voltaic system, large enough for greater than 1,000 Earths to suit inside, with room to spare.
Associated: Jupiter: A information to the biggest planet within the photo voltaic system
Whereas the 4 interior planets of the photo voltaic system – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars – are all product of strong, rocky materials, Jupiter is a gasoline big with a composition much like the Solar; it’s 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 sooner than a Class 5 hurricane on Earth.
Trying to find strong floor
Begin from the highest of Earth’s environment, go down about 60 miles (roughly 100 kilometers), and the air stress constantly will increase. In the end you hit Earth’s floor, both land or water.
Examine that with Jupiter: Begin close to the highest of its largely hydrogen and helium environment, and like on Earth, the stress will increase the deeper you go. However on Jupiter, the stress is immense.
Because the layers of gasoline above you push down an increasing number of, it’s like being on the backside of the ocean – however as a substitute of water, you’re surrounded by gasoline. The stress turns into so intense that the human physique would implode; you’ll be squashed.
Go down 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers), and the new, dense gasoline begins to behave unusually. Finally, the gasoline turns right into a type of liquid hydrogen, creating what might be regarded as the biggest 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 metallic, a fabric so unique that solely not too long ago, and with nice issue, 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.
Remember that 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, strong 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 precise nature of the core’s materials. Probably the most favored mannequin: It’s not strong, like rock, however extra like a sizzling, dense and presumably metallic combination of liquid and strong.
The stress at Jupiter’s core is so immense that it will be like 100 million Earth atmospheres urgent down on you – or two Empire State buildings on high of every sq. inch of your physique.
However stress wouldn’t be your solely drawback. A spacecraft attempting to succeed in Jupiter’s core could be melted by the acute warmth – 35,000 levels Fahrenheit (20,000 levels Celsius). That’s 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’s potential human beings won’t exist.
That’s as a result of Jupiter acts as a protect 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 house particles might have crashed into Earth; if one had been a cataclysmic collision, it might have prompted an extinction-level occasion. Simply have a look at what occurred to the dinosaurs.
Possibly Jupiter gave an help to our existence, however the planet itself is awfully inhospitable to life – not less than, life as we all know it.
The identical is just not the case with a Jupiter moon, Europa, maybe our greatest likelihood to seek out life elsewhere within the photo voltaic system.
NASA’s Europa Clipper, a robotic probe launched in October 2024, is scheduled to do about 50 fly-bys over that moon to research its huge underground ocean.
May one thing be dwelling in Europa’s water? Scientists received’t know for some time. Due to Jupiter’s distance from Earth, the probe received’t arrive till April 2030.
