Imagine the very earliest humans looking up at the night sky.
Among the brightest objects they would have seen were the planets.
And among those would have been Jupiter.
What Jupiter actually was in those days was a mystery, and it took until Galileo first
trained a telescope on it to learn more.
But as our understanding of Jupiter as a planet has progressed from there, new mysteries have
arisen regarding this world.
So here are ten unusual aspects of planet Jupiter.
10.
You Can Hear Jupiter on Shortwave Radio
Amateur astronomy is usually something we think of in terms of optical telescopes, binoculars
and naked eye star gazing.
But there is another way to do it.
Radio astronomy and with the right equipment, you can actually listen to Jupiter.
Jupiter produces radio waves very strongly at roughly 5 to 40 megahertz.
This means that a shortwave radio with the right antenna can pick up Jupiter’s emissions.
How it creates these radio emissions has to do with the actions of subatomic particles
spiraling around in Jupiter’s intense magnetic field.
The sounds tend to sound like distant ocean waves crashing on a shore along with crackling
and pops similar to listening to a bag of popcorn cook in a microwave.
To hear them, check out NASA’s Radio Jove project, link below, for more information.
9.
The Great Red Spot
One of Jupiter’s most prominent features is the great red spot.
Astronomers have been observing it continuously since about 1830, but unconfirmed observations
of what might have been the red spot go back to the 17th century.
It’s anyone’s guess how old the spot actually is, but even at two centuries it’s hard
to imagine how a single storm could rage for so long, but it has.
But it’s also changed across time, and may even be dying.
In the 21st century, the spot has been observed to be shrinking, and even flaking with small
parts of it spiraling off the edges and dissipating.
This could mean that storm is winding down, but equally possible is that it might flare
back up and continue to rage on for centuries.
Part of the problem of figuring this out is that we actually know very little about the
dynamics of the red spot, or how deeply it extends into Jupiter’s atmosphere.
There is some indication that material from deep below upwelling into Jupiter’s atmosphere
is likely playing a large role.
But much of it is a mystery, including it’s coloration, which ranges from red to a kind
of salmon color.
Chemically what’s happening to cause the coloration, and why it changes, is also largely
unknown.
8.
Metallic Hydrogen
At the temperatures and pressures present within Jupiter’s interior, hydrogen can
do something very strange when compared to its normal gaseous self.
While it normally does not behave like metal under normal conditions, under the conditions
present at Jupiter it can take on a form known as metallic hydrogen, and behave something
like a metal and even become electrically conductive.
The metallic hydrogen at Jupiter is thought to extend very deep into the planet’s interior
and be in a fluid state.
Above it would be a layer hydrogen in its normal liquid state, meaning that much of
jupiter is in a fluid state under intense pressure and heat.
One odd property of metallic hydrogen is that it’s thought that it may be metastable,
meaning that you could take a sample of it out of Jupiter into low pressure, and it would
remain metallic hydrogen.
This may have implications on future technology.
Metallic hydrogen is thought to be a superconductor, but at room temperature rather than very low
temperatures as is typical for superconductors.
And if it is in fact metastable, it may turn out to be useful for that purpose.
Experiments to create metallic hydrogen here on earth have reported some unconfirmed successes.
7.
Jupiter’s Core May Have Disappeared
Early in the history of the solar system, it’s likely that Jupiter started out as
a solid core of rock.
In order to attract and collect up so much material from the solar nebula to form the
atmosphere, it’s likely that this object would have been quite large, on the order
of 12-40 times more massive than earth.
It’s always been assumed that this rocky core still exists at the center of Jupiter.
But this may not actually be the case.
Recent measurements indicate that Jupiter may have no distinct core at all, or if it
does, there isn’t a hard boundary between it and the metallic hydrogen.
The original material from the core is still there, but rather diffusely mixed in with
the metallic hydrogen.
This is actually rather strange since this does not appear to be the case with Saturn,
our other gas giant.
In contrast, it appears to have something more resembling a solid core than Jupiter
has, despite being less massive.
Why there’s a difference is still a mystery.
6.
Wind and Lightning and the little red spot
Jupiter’s atmosphere is violent and ridden with lightning; very powerful lightning that
can be as much as ten times stronger than it is here on earth.
And this lighting strikes constantly, but one oddity about Jupiter’s lightning is
that it only strikes near the poles of the planet, with none at the equator.
This is thought to be an effect of solar heating which stabilizes Jupiter’s upper atmosphere
enough to prevent the convection that would normally produce lightning.
The poles do not see this heating, and because of that, they see lightning.
In addition to lightning, there are Jupiter’s winds.
It’s winds speeds can exceed 384 miles per hour, nearly double that of the highest wind
speeds recorded in hurricanes here on earth.
These speeds on Jupiter were recorded in an odd feature known as the little red spot.
This feature began forming in 1998 with the merging of three separate white storms.
There were subsequently several other mergers with other storms, but in 2005 for reasons
unknown the entire storm turned red.
What this means, and whether we are seeing the formation of a new great red spot remains
to be seen.
5.
Jupiter May Have Been Key to the Genesis of Life on Earth … or not
One of the contributing factors to life’s genesis on earth is that after the late heavy
bombardment stopped, earth has experienced a general calm as far as impact events go
allowing life on earth to flourish.
Well, unless you’re a dinosaur.
That said, while they do periodically happen, of course, it could conceivably be far worse.
Conventional thinking has always been that this is due to Jupiter essentially vacuuming
up material, thereby protecting the inner solar system.
But more recent evidence actually suggests the opposite, that Jupiter and Saturn in tandem
tend to toss material at us rather than deflect it.
Regardless of whichever is the case, we actually have seen Jupiter eat a comet.
In 1993 comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was determined to have been captured and in orbit of Jupiter.
It was subsequently torn apart by the giant planet and in 1994 multiple large chunks of
the comet smacked into Jupiter in a line leaving a series of dark spots on the planet’s atmosphere
that were even visible in small telescopes for a time.
4.
Jupiter’s Massive Magnetosphere
Not only is Jupiter the largest planet in the solar system, excepting the sun’s, it
has by far the strongest magnetosphere of any object in the solar system.
This magnetosphere is thought to be generated by the metallic hydrogen, and is so large
that it stretches out to the orbit of Saturn making it one of the largest natural structures
present in the solar system.
This leads to an interesting effect on Jupiter.
Gigantic auroras glow at the north and south poles, and they are far more powerful than
what we see on earth with our northern and southern lights.
Up until recently Jupiter’s auroras were thought to simply be larger versions of earth’s,
but this has turned out to not be the case.
Instead it’s a secondary type of aurora that only causes a very weak effect here,
where electrons are accelerated into the atmosphere via rippling in the magnetic field.
Given that Jupiter’s magnetic field is so much more powerful, it can accelerate the
electrons to much greater effect into the planet’s atmosphere.
And while Jupiter’s auroras never stop and are always on display, unfortunately if you
were in orbit of that planet you wouldn’t see them.
They do not radiate in the visible light spectrum.
3.
Where is Jupiter’s Water?
Jupiter is not just a huge ball of hydrogen and helium.
Within its atmospheric makeup are also many other elements including sulfur, nitrogen
and carbon.
In fact, it seems enriched with them when compared to an object like the sun.
How this happened is thought to be due to water freezing and capturing the materials,
and as Jupiter formed it could have ingested large amounts of these enriched ice chunks.
So, there should be plenty of water in the atmosphere of Jupiter.
But there doesn’t seem to be, at least in the concentrations expected in order to yield
all the other materials present.
How the concentrations of other elements present in Jupiter’s atmosphere came to be remains
a mystery.
2.
Jupiter’s Mysterious Flashes
Over the past few decades amateur and professional astronomers have noticed bright, short lived
flashes of light coming from Jupiter.
While these are thought to be impacts of large objects to be seen at such a distance, they
did not leave the characteristic darkened debris spots that comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 did.
As if that weren’t enough, Jupiter’s belts also have a tendency to disappear occasionally,
only to reappear some time later.
Some insights have recently been gained into this phenomenon, it appears that white frozen
ammonia clouds can occasionally obscure the belts, only to dissipate allowing them to
reappear.
Number One.
The Ice Shell Moons
While Jupiter itself is unlikely to be habitable to much of anything, it’s moons are a different
story.
All four of the Galilean moons of Jupiter have been advanced as possibly having had
the opportunity for life to arise, including Io early in its history.
As to Ganymede, Callisto and, of course, Europa, liquid water oceans beneath the surface of
their ice shells seem strong possibilities for all these worlds.
As such, in principle, they are all three candidates for current life.
While any life found on these bodies is probably going to be microbial, or at least very simple,
life does tend to surprise so who knows what might lie under those shells of ice.
But in particular, one candidate stands out.
Europa.
That moon may be doing more than simply presenting the conditions that life might be there, but
rather may be hinting directly that it exists.
Some have speculated that the cracks in Europa’s ice show reddish-brown coloration that may
be caused by frozen microorganisms from the ocean below.
This led to Brad Dalton of NASA Ames to compare the infrared signature of the colorations
with microrganisms that live in hot springs here on earth.
They were a very close match.
Further work with other bacteria also showed certain similarities.
While it’s also possible that the colorations are simply caused by salts or minerals, it
does give one more reason to check out Europa and see if anything is alive in its oceans.
Thanks for listening!
I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier publicly thanking Jupiter again
for it’s awesomeness … I ‘ve done this before.
When making this video and looking through all the new shots of Jupiter coming from Juno,
well one can’t help but to be astonished at this giant amazing, turbulent world.
Thanks again champ and be sure to check out my books at your favorite online book retailer
and subscribe to my channels for regular, in-depth explorations into the interesting,
weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live.