Incredible facts about the gas giant
In Roman mythology, Jupiter was the supreme god, the lord of lightning and thunder. The planet Jupiter is not only the largest in the solar system, but also one of the most mysterious, many of the mysteries of which scientists cannot solve today. In our review of a dozen of interesting facts about the "gas giant", which is the fifth planet from the Sun.
1. Jupiter could be a star
Galileo - the man who discovered Jupiter
In 1610, Galileo discovered Jupiter and its four main moons: Europa, Io, Callisto and Ganymede, which are today known as the "Galilean moons". This was the first time in history that humans have observed any other celestial body in the solar system besides the moon. Galileo's discovery also provided excellent support for the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and his theory that the Earth is not the center of the universe.
The mass of the largest planet in the solar system is twice the mass of the rest of the bodies in the solar system combined (excluding the sun). Jupiter's atmosphere is very similar to that of a star and is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Scientists believe that if Jupiter were about 80 times larger, then it would turn into a star. Now it is essentially a miniature solar system with its 4 huge satellites and 63 smaller ones. Jupiter is so massive that it is 1,300 times the size of Earth.
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2. Great Red Spot
Jupiter's Great Red Spot
The magnificent stripes on Jupiter (which everyone has probably seen) are caused by constant strong winds that blow at speeds of up to 650 kilometers per hour. White cloud zones in the upper atmosphere are composed of frozen and crystallized ammonia. Dark clouds, which contain other chemicals, are found in the middle atmosphere, while blue clouds are found in the deepest visible atmosphere.
What stands out most on Jupiter is a giant super-storm called the Great Red Spot, which has been raging for 300 years. The counterclockwise rotating Great Red Spot is more than three times the diameter of the Earth. The wind in its center develops a speed of up to 450 kilometers per hour. The large red spot is constantly changing in size, and sometimes it even seems that it disappears, but then comes back again.
3. Jupiter's incredible magnetic field
Jupiter's magnetic field
Due to the magnetic field, which is almost 20 thousand times stronger than that of the Earth, Jupiter can be considered the real "magnetic king" of our planetary system. Jupiter catches and attracts electrically charged particles that continuously bombard the system, with radiation levels 1000 times greater than the fatal level for humans. This radiation is so intense that it can damage even NASA's most heavily shielded spacecraft, such as the Galileo probe.
Jupiter has a magnetosphere that stretches for a staggering 1 - 3 million kilometers in the direction of the Sun, and also stretches like a tail behind the gas giant orbiting the Sun for… 1 billion kilometers.
4. Furious spinning top
Jupiter, despite its gigantic size, makes a complete revolution on its axis in less than 10 hours (compared to 24 hours in the case of Earth). As a gaseous planet, Jupiter does not rotate like a solid planet like Earth. Instead, it spins slightly faster at the equator than in the polar regions (at an average speed of 50,000 kilometers per hour, or 27 times faster than Earth). Therefore, a day on Jupiter lasts 9 hours and 56 minutes at both poles and 9 hours and 50 minutes in the equator of the giant planet. This extremely fast rotation makes Jupiter more convex at the equator and flattened at the poles.
5. Jupiter - the largest radio in the solar system
Solar System Radio
Another area in which Jupiter stands out is the "explosions" of powerful natural radio waves that this planet produces, creating eerie noises when radio broadcasts are received by shortwave radio stations on Earth. These emissions of radio waves are naturally generated by the unstable plasma in the gas giant's magnetosphere. When they were first discovered by earth scientists, these radio waves caused quite a stir, as they were considered to be alien negotiations.
Most astrophysicists assume that the ionized gases from Jupiter's upper atmosphere and its magnetic poles sometimes act like a very powerful radio laser, producing radiation so intense that the gas giant quite often dwarfs even the sun as a source of radio waves. Scientists believe the power of this phenomenon is somehow related to the volcanic moon Io.
6. Rings of Jupiter
NASA scientists were surprised when the Voyager 1 spacecraft discovered three rings around Jupiter's equator in 1979. These rings are much weaker than the rings of Saturn and were simply not visible from Earth. The main ring is about 30 kilometers thick and 6,000 kilometers wide, and the flat inner ring-cloud, called the "Halo Ring," is about 20,000 km thick. Both the Main Ring and the Halo are composed of small, dark particles. The third ring, also known as the "Cobweb", is actually three rings made up of microscopic debris from Jupiter's three moons - Adrastea, Thebes and Amalthea.
7. Protector of the planets
Jupiter - planetary protector
Since Jupiter is the largest celestial body in the solar system (other than the sun itself), its gravitational forces may have helped shape literally the rest of the solar system. Jupiter may have pushed Uranus and Neptune back into the present orbits of these planets, according to a study published in the journal Nature. And according to an article published in the journal Science, Jupiter, along with Saturn, may have also "deposited" huge amounts of debris on the inner planets during the early history of the solar system.
Also, scientists are now almost sure that the gas giant is holding back some asteroids, "not letting them go" to Earth. Current data show that Jupiter's gravitational field has a profound effect on many asteroids.
8. The giant Jupiter and the small Earth have a core of the same size
Small core of a large planet
Scientists suggest that the inner core of Jupiter is 10 times smaller than the entire planet Earth. And it is most likely composed of liquid metallic hydrogen. The Earth's diameter is just under 13,000 kilometers, so Jupiter's core should be just under 1,300 kilometers across. This makes it the size of the Earth's core, which is believed to be about 1200 kilometers in diameter.
9. The atmosphere of Jupiter: a chemist's dream and everyone else's nightmare
Jupiter's atmosphere - chemical warehouse
The composition of Jupiter's atmosphere is primarily a mixture of 89.2 percent molecular hydrogen and 10.2 percent helium. The rest of the atmosphere consists of trace amounts of ammonia, hydrogen deuteride, methane, ethane, water, ammonia ice, frozen water, and ammonia hydro-sulfide aerosols. Due to a magnetic field 20,000 times stronger than that of Earth, the huge gas giant has a dense inner core of (currently) unknown composition, which is completely surrounded by a thick layer of enriched helium and liquid metallic hydrogen.
10. Jupiter's moon Callisto - the celestial body with the largest number of craters
Craters, craters, craters….
Callisto is the farthest of the four Galilean moons, orbiting the gas giant in about a week. Because its orbit lies outside Jupiter's radiation belt, Callisto is less tidal than any other Galilean moon.
Callisto's diameter is 5,000 kilometers, that is, this satellite is approximately the size of the planet Mercury. After Ganymede and Titan, Callisto is the third largest satellite in the solar system (Io is the fourth, and the Moon is the fifth). The average temperature on Callisto's surface is -139 degrees Celsius. And Callisto is unusual in that its surface is literally dotted with craters.