Here’s an interesting strange event flashback and fascinating facts about Jupiter. Years ago, an astrophotographer, George Hall of Dallas, Texas captured video of flashes on Jupiter. It has been said that without the large mass of Jupiter being where it is in our solar system, life on earth would probably not exist. The massive gas giant contains 70% of our system’s planetary mass {NASA} and it both draws in and slingshots out space rocks, saving the earth from extinction level impacts by comets and asteroids in the process. Thanks, Jupiter.
An apparent meteor struck Jupiter yesterday, creating an explosion so massive that amateur astronomers looking through their telescopes her on Earth were able to see it. Amateur astrophotographer George Hall of Dallas, Texas happened to have a camera and telescope pointed at the planet at the time, and managed to snag some video footage of the fireball, which he soon uploaded to his Flickr account. {PetPixel}
Here is George Hall’s great footage of the flashes on Jupiter which was uploaded to YouTube.
… Jupiter acts as a “cosmic vacuum cleaner”, protecting our planet from impacts that could be devastating. EarthSky writes, “Jupiter’s gravity also protects us. Long-period comets enter the solar system from its outer reaches. Jupiter’s gravity slings most of these fast-moving ice balls out of the solar system before they can get close to Earth. So long-period comets are thought to strike Earth only about every 30 million years. Without Jupiter nearby, long-period comets would collide with our planet up to 1000 times more frequently. To understand how devastating this kind of impact would be on Earth, consider this: a similar strike in 2009 caused a bruise on the face of Jupiter the size of the Pacific Ocean.” One of the most dazzling Jupiter impacts was the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet crash in 1994. The comet broke into more than 20 pieces as it approached Jupiter, with each piece crashing into the giant planet in a chain of impacts. Astronomers used telescopes on the ground and in space to watch that event as it unfolded.
Flashes from impacts on Jupiter have been recorded many times. Here’s another:
On September 10, Dan Petersen of Racine, Wisconsin, reported on Cloudy Nights forum the visual detection of a flash on Jupiter at 11:35 UTC. Petersen observed a bright white two second long explosion just inside Jupiter’s eastern limb, located at about Longitude 1 = 335, and Latitude = + 12 degrees north, inside the southern edge of the NEB. The report was sent to Richard Schmude of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO) and forwarded to us by John H. Rogers, Jupiter Section Director at the British Astronomical Association.
Fact Check on Jupiter’s Surface
Nothing really “crashes” or “strikes” Jupiter. Instead, things burns up in the gaseous atmosphere. Here’s a fact check on Jupiter having any solid surface.
Before AI made the scene, we had do to all of our source research by hand. I did this for over a decade, combing through many web sites looking for the facts. Here is my old method:
Step 1: Collect several different views. Don’t just take and repeat the first answer you find. This is the number one most common information mistake. It has rapidly polluted the Internet with misinformation. People quickly find and pass on information that agrees with their pre-existing views without checking sources and facts. On the question of Jupiter having a surface, the answers range from “Yes,” to “Unknown,” to “No.” Why is that, do you suppose? Here are some of the answers we found:
- “Jupiter does have a solid core of rock, its thought to be mainly made up of the heavy elements like Iron.” – uk.answers.yahoo.com
- “There is a small solid core, but it’s nothing like a planetary surface as we usually think of them.” – answers.com
- “We do not yet know if a solid surface exists on Jupiter.” – coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/
- “Jupiter is composed of gases — hydrogen and helium, mostly — all the way down to its core, which may be a molten ball or a solid rock.” – space.com
- “Jupiter does not have a hard, rocky surface like the one we have here on Earth.” – scienceabc.com
- “They have no solid surface and are just made of gas. They are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.” – answers.com
- “As a gas giant, Jupiter doesn’t have a true surface.” – solarsystem.nasa.gov
Step 2: Consider the authority of each source. Some kid on yahoo or quora probably does not have access to the data that NASA has. On the other hand, do not just go with the answer from what appears to be from the most authoritative source. This is another common “information mistake” because 1) experts sometimes disagree, 2) experts are sometimes wrong, 3) the expert view you find may be out of date, 4) experts, like everyone else, must prove their claims. We have seen throughout history that blindly trusting authority can be a deadly mistake. Then again, do not blindly distrust authority, either. That can be equally disastrous.
In 1997, the existence of the core was suggested by gravitational measurements, indicating a mass of 12 to 45 times the mass of Earth, or roughly 4%–14% of the total mass of Jupiter. {UniverseToday}
Step 3: Consider the dates of each statement. Do not just accept the most recent claim. The date of a claim must be considered with the source and with the details of why the claim is being made. If there is very new information that a core with a surface has been detected on Jupiter, and the details check out, that would be significant and might override all other previous statements about Jupiter not having a solid surface.
Step 4: Consider the laws of physics, the basics of how things work as we know them in the universe. This can take you far. We do not have direct experience on earth to compare with the pressures generated by Jupiter. We can observe different colored clouds moving on the surface of Jupiter including a red spot that appears and disappears at times. The planet is rotating and we know that more and more pressure builds higher and higher temperatures. (See Known gas laws)
We know that heavier materials sink. Thus, we can visualize a hot rotating mass at the center of Jupiter. The “surface” of that mas could look like the high temperature heated metal version of a muddy river bottom, a slow thickening that is never really solid.
Diagram of Jupiter from Wikipedia
Doesn’t temperature go up with increasing pressure? If so, how can there be an ice core? Wouldn’t it melt? The temperature shown in one diagram for the transition between the possible rock/ice inner core and the huge fuzzy outer core was 40 Mbar. This is 4000 Pascals or 0.004 MPa. {UnitJug}
At sea-level on earth, the pressure is, on average 1,013.25 mbar. {Wiki} Notice that mbar is not Mbar. The first is millibar and the second is Mega-bar. To properly compare with Jupiter’s 40 Mbar inner core estimate, the earth’s sea-level surface atmospheric pressure is only 0.0000101325 Mbar.
The phase diagram for water shows that water remains solid above a certain pressure.
Water phase diagram, from ISBU
Seeing another phase diagram for water together with the one above shows again that water is a solid even at high temperatures above about 100kbar of pressure.
NASA stated that the Juno spacecraft will give us an answer. “By measuring Jupiter’s gravitational and magnetic fields, Juno will be able to determine whether a core exists.” {NASA}
The $1.1 billion Juno mission launched in August 2011 and arrived in orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. Since then, the solar-powered spacecraft has been using eight instruments to study the gas giant’s composition, interior structure, and gravitational and magnetic fields. It will continue to do this work, barring some sort of malfunction, through at least February 2018, the end of Juno’s primary mission.
So, two years beyond the Juno primary mission now in the year 2020, what is the answer? Does Jupiter have a solid core? From the Juno data, we can read that scientists determined that Jupiter has a huge fuzzy rotating, electrically conducting fluid outer core. This has convection currents and is the mechanism for generating the planet’s magnetic fields. {SWRI}
In January, 2018, an answer was revealed.
Before NASA sent its Juno spacecraft to explore Jupiter, astronomers were “totally wrong” about much of what they thought they knew about the planet, the mission’s principal investigator, Scott Bolton, said during a lecture here at the 231st meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Tuesday (Jan. 9). …Astronomers believed that Jupiter had either a very small and dense core, or perhaps no core at all. But data from Juno revealed that Jupiter has an enormous, “fuzzy” core that might be partially dissolved. {Space }
… the Juno mission, which arrived in July 2016, found that Jupiter has a very diffuse core, mixed into the mantle. A possible cause is an impact from a planet of about ten Earth masses a few million years after Jupiter’s formation, which would have disrupted an originally solid Jovian core. {Wiki}
Does Jupiter have a solid inner core? It seems the answer is no. Jupiter, perhaps because it “ate” a planet 10 times the size of the earth at some point, was found by the Juno spacecraft to have a large fuzzy core of liquid metallic hydrogen which flows like water, reflects light like a mirror, and is a good electrical and thermal conductor. {NASA} Fascinating.
