Jupiter - the big orange storm

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 LeeWood 01 Mar 2020

I may have read it all wrong but ...

Jupiter is all gas and liquid. How do we know this when we can't see through the outer  layers ?

I has an orange storm - of wider diameter than planet earth. It has endured for hundreds of years. How can this phenomena exist when all around is motile ? External evidence is of clouds which tower hundreds of km above the general cloud mass.

Cloud / vapour blocks the view to what is going on below; no-one has explained this phenomena, got any theories ?

 Tom Valentine 01 Mar 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

My understanding is that even the top scientists can't answer your question properly . They seem to agree that it is shrinking, though.

OP LeeWood 01 Mar 2020
In reply to Tom Valentine:

Should this stop us theorising ? I thought we had some of the best scientists here on ukc

 Lankyman 01 Mar 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

I am a top scientist with a PhD in advanced Lethargy and Apathy. I solved this problem once while watching dirty dishwater going down the plughole (curry had been the main dish). I thought about writing it up for peer review but, after lying down for a while, could not be bothered. I think an alien spacecraft plummeting into the planet is probably close to the real answer. Have you tried Wikipedia or Youtube - most of the UKC top scientists seem to get their answers from there?

 Tom Valentine 01 Mar 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

> Jupiter is all gas and liquid. 

Actually a lot of research points to the existence of a solid core . Estimates vary as to its size but I seem to remember one suggesting twice the earth's diameter  and thirty times the mass. How this would tie in with the red spot I can't imagine.

 wbo2 01 Mar 2020
In reply to LeeWood: I was going to write something but the wikipedia reference does,a decent job.  It's pretty similar to a storm on earth really - but different 

OP LeeWood 01 Mar 2020
In reply to wbo2:

Yes, of course I read that before. Given that the spot has persisted so long, and in light of comparisons with earth - one would imagine that it related to the planets crust, but here the problem - a prior assumption that the planet is liquid. Even if it has the solid centre which Tom refers to, that would be miniscule w r t the placement of an externally observed  feature such as the spot

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 wbo2 01 Mar 2020
In reply to LeeWood:no, not really.  It's about the same lat, but moves around longitudinally.  It's associated with movement and rotational forces in the planet's atmosphere

In reply to Tom Valentine:

> Actually a lot of research points to the existence of a solid core . Estimates vary as to its size but I seem to remember one suggesting twice the earth's diameter  and thirty times the mass. How this would tie in with the red spot I can't imagine.

I heard speculation that it could be a metallic hydrogen core.  

 wercat 01 Mar 2020
In reply to Chive Talkin\':

Arthur C. Clarke hoped it might be an Earth sized diamond!

 Tom Valentine 01 Mar 2020
In reply to wercat:

It would have probably have  affected prices in Hatton Garden.

OP LeeWood 01 Mar 2020
In reply to wercat & wbo2:

whatever it is there is immense gravity and thus immense pressure - which may lead to an escape channel oriented under this storm spot; as the solid centre is well deep relative to surface clouds it would be natural for it to wander - long and lat (wbo2) but there must still be a physical feature to keep it roughly where it is, otheriwse it would just drift off like eddies in a river cross-currents

 Dave the Rave 01 Mar 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

Wait for Coal. He will know.

 wbo2 01 Mar 2020
In reply to LeeWood: no, honestly there doesn't need to be.  The atmosphere is organised as a series of rotating bands, the size of which will be controlled by a combination of planet size, physical properties of the atmosphere, and the rate of rotation.   If you look at a satellite image of Jupiter you can see them.  Similar effects occur on the earth..  horse latitudes, in the southern ocean a band of storms. 

 The red spot is a big eddy in one of these bands.  It doesn't move latitude much as its stuck in a band, but if does move longitude... it's not fixed

In reply to LeeWood:

> whatever it is there is immense gravity and thus immense pressure - which may lead to an escape channel oriented under this storm spot; as the solid centre is well deep relative to surface clouds it would be natural for it to wander - long and lat (wbo2) but there must still be a physical feature to keep it roughly where it is, otheriwse it would just drift off like eddies in a river cross-currents

Couldn't it be shaped by the solar wind or magnetic effects

 krikoman 02 Mar 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

 I thought it had solid hydrogen core

OP LeeWood 02 Mar 2020
In reply to wbo2:

> Similar effects occur on the earth..  horse latitudes, in the southern ocean a band of storms

But here the difference - on planet earth storms relate to physical features and relative heating between land and sea. You almost speak as tho there's really no mystery ...

https://www.iflscience.com/space/great-red-spot-orange-pimple-jupiter-s-sup...

'A fluid instability would disappear in a few days to weeks, as in the case of the scars caused when several fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 struck Jupiter in 1994 – so an energy source must be powering it'

As also evidenced by the growing height of these storm clouds - the Great Red Spot is shrinking in diameter but 8km taller than surrounding clouds - and getting taller. I mean to say - if there's an energy source it can't just float around at will, can it ?


 

 Phil79 02 Mar 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Jupiters_Massive_Winds_Likely_Generated_...

This provides some interesting speculation/theories as to what might be responsible.

I guess its entirely unlike the earth in many ways. We have solid crust and a thin not very dense atmosphere, and wind on earth is driven by solor heating. 

Jupiter is more like a star, largely comprised of hydrogen and helium, and atmospheric winds are driven by internal rather than external heat.

 malk 02 Mar 2020
In reply to krikoman:

hydrogen is a metallic liquid at those pressures/temps? more likely to have had a rock/ice core to attract the gas in the first place? which would also be acting like a metal (if it still exists) and may explain jupiter's odd magnetic field? :

https://www.sciencealert.com/jupiter-magnetic-field-asymmetrical-great-blue...

the persistence of the red spot reminds me of hotspots on earth from mantle plumes. maybe similar plumes on jupiter coming from the deep?

https://www.universetoday.com/47966/jupiters-core/

OP LeeWood 02 Mar 2020
In reply to malk:

so it seems unlikely we'll ever be sending a rover to land on Jupiter

 Tom Valentine 02 Mar 2020
In reply to LeeWood:

Europa is more likely to be a destination of interest in that respect.

 wbo2 03 Mar 2020
In reply to Tom Valentine: SO many of Jupiters moons would be an interesting target

To malk - mantle plumes are an interesting analogy... some of those are VERY persistent in comparism to the continents, oceans, skidding over the top of them.  .

I was thinking a little about this this morning,, that you have this mahoosive planet, spinning round, so the velocity difference at a point at the pole compared to a point on the equator must be enormous,,, with a heavy , dense atmosphere.  This can't all rotate as one so the revolution will tear the atmosphere into the bands we see and eddys, storms are an inevitable consequence. 


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