Jupiter, it's mushballs all the way down

54 pointsposted 10 months ago
by docmechanic
(sciencedaily.com)

13 Comments

zx8080

10 months ago

For those who are interested and wants to see how it looks:

There are no pictures in this article.

It's just some story. Actually it is not a science paper.

dmix

10 months ago

No cameras have yet descended into Jupiter’s atmosphere yet, so makes sense. It would probably only be be able to take hazy images before the pressure destroyed it.

nine_k

10 months ago

At about 700 km below the cloud tops, where the gases start to liquefy under pressure, the pressure is estimated to be merely 700 bar, less than half of the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana trench. Earth-made cameras should have no trouble operating there, given an adequate enclosure. The temperature might be a problem, but I could not find any estimates for that depth.

We could certainly put a plane / balloon deep into the Jupiter atmosphere, if we were able to slow the arriving spacecraft to subsonic speeds in the atmosphere. Given that the low-Jupiter orbital velocity is 41 km/s, it's not an easy feat, even if the spacecraft brings enough reaction mass for a retro burn to slow down and insert itself to the low-Jupiter circular orbit.

chewbacha

10 months ago

Got through the first section and it started to feel strangely repetitive.

fooker

10 months ago

Well it's a verifiable/falsifiable hypothesis, which is great. Eventually we'll send a probe and find out how correct this is.

Fairly rare in physics nowadays to propose a hypothesis that's verifiable with only a few billions in funding :)

kjellsbells

10 months ago

I'm still hoping that Arthur C Clarke was right and that the temperature and pressure in the core is so intense that it has fused into one incredibly rigid molecular structure. A diamond. Ah well.

x3n0ph3n3

10 months ago

I'm hoping for metalic hydrogen.

SoftTalker

10 months ago

More likely a lump of (molten) rock from all the asteroids it has absorbed.

singularity2001

10 months ago

would it be doable with today's technology to do radar scans to see if inside of the gas hull there is a rigid body planet bigger than earth?

waynecochran

10 months ago

    This is part of the first 3D picture of the planet's atmosphere, which shows storms are primarily shallow.
Pix or didn't happen.