Jupiter’s chaotic storms have roots deep beneath its surface

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/jupiter-s-chaotic-storms-have-roots-deep-beneath-its-surface

Source:  By Paul Voosen, Science.

Excerpt: The gaseous veil of Jupiter’s surface has long cast a pall over scientists’ quest to understand the giant planet’s depths. In particular, researchers have debated whether the bands of east-west winds ...extend deeper into the planet, or are merely superficial. Now, a series of papers from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, published today in Nature, has revealed that the roots of Jupiter’s winds indeed run deep. ...Juno’s scientists discovered an asymmetry in Jupiter’s north-south gravitational field that reflected shifting masses driven by rising winds from 3000 kilometers deep within the planet. These flows of hydrogen and helium, the team shows, are driven up by energy lost from the planet’s deeper interior, which rotates like a solid because of crushing high pressures....    See also Scientific American article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/juno-peers-deep-into-jupiters-abyss-to-reveal-weird-winds/

Popular posts from this blog

Stellar remains of famed 1987 supernova found at last

Planets around dead stars offer glimpse of the Solar System’s future—after the Sun swallows us up

The Smallest Moon of Mars May Not Be What It Seemed