Scientists have found that the interior of Jupiter is filled with the remains of baby planets that were swallowed up by giant gases, which, as it spreads, become the mast we see today. The findings come from the first clear view of the chemistry beneath the planet’s cloudy outer atmosphere.
Despite being the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter it has spread little about its inner workings. Telescopes have taken thousands of images vortex clouds in the upper atmosphere of the giant gas, but these Van Gogh storms also act as obstacles that hinder the view of the one below.
“Jupiter was one of the first planets to form on our planet solar system“In the first million years since the solar system was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, lead researcher Yamila Miguel, an astrophysicist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told Live Science. However, we know almost nothing for sure.
Related: The ‘baby Jupiter’ was found in the process of forming around a star 500 light-years away.
In the new study, researchers were finally able to look over Jupiter’s dark cloud cover using gravitational data collected by NASA’s Juno space probe. These data allowed the group to map the rocky material at the heart of the giant planet, which revealed many heavy elements. The chemical composition suggests that Jupiter swallowed the baby or planetesimal planets to promote its widespread growth.
Growing a huge gas
Jupiter may have been a round gas ball today, but it began life by creating rocky material, just like every other planet in the solar system. Like the planet gravity as more and more rocks were introduced, the rock core became so dense that large amounts of gas began to be extracted from long distances – mainly hydrogen and helium. Sunto create a huge gas – filled atmosphere.
There are two competing theories about Jupiter’s collection of its early rocky material. One theory is that Jupiter accumulated billions of smaller space rocks, which astronomers call nicknames (even if they are closer to rock than rock).
The opposite theory, supported by the findings of the new study, states that the nucleus of Jupiter was formed by the absorption of many planetesimals: large space rocks several kilometers long, and if left unhindered, they could act as seeds for smaller rocky planets. like Earth or could develop on Mars.
However, so far it has not been possible to say for sure which of these theories is correct. “Since we can’t see directly how Jupiter was created, we need to combine the pieces with the information we have today,” Miguel said. “And this is no easy task.”
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Exploring the planet
To try to resolve the dispute, the researchers had to build a picture of Jupiter inside. “Here on Earth, we use seismographs to study the interior of the planet using earthquakes,” Miguel said. But Jupiter has no surface to place such devices, and Jupiter’s core is unlikely to have much tectonic activity, he added.
Instead, the researchers built models of computers inside Jupiter, mainly by combining data collected by Juno, as well as some data from his previous Galileo. The probes measured the gravitational field of the planet at different points in its orbit. The data showed that the rocky material created by Jupiter has a high concentration of heavy elements, which form dense solids and therefore have a stronger gravitational effect than gaseous atmospheres. These data allowed the team to map small changes in the planet’s gravity, which helped them see where the rocky material was inside the planet.
“Juno provided very accurate gravity data, which helped us limit the distribution of material in the interior of Jupiter,” Miguel said. “This is very unique data that we can only get with a spacecraft orbiting the planet.”
The model of the researcher showed that the Jupiter is the equivalent of 11 to 30 of the mass of heavy elements within Jupiter (3% to 9% of the mass of Jupiter), which is much more than expected.
Pebbles vs planetesimals
New models indicate the origin of Jupiter’s planetary-picking because the theory of pebbles cannot explain the high concentration of heavy elements, Miguel said. If Jupiter had originated from rock fragments in the beginning, the beginning of the gas accretion process, once the planet was large enough, would have immediately ended the rock accretion stage. That is, because the growing layer of gas would create a pressure barrier, the extra rock would stop it from penetrating the planet, Miguel explained. This reduced phase of accretion of rock would probably reduce the abundance or metallicity of Jupiter to a much greater extent than the amount calculated by the researchers.
However, the planetesimals could be attached to the core of Jupiter, even after the start of the gas accretion phase; this is because the gravitational pull of the rocks would be greater than the pressure exerted by the gas. This simultaneous increase in rocky material and gas proposed by planetary theory is the only explanation for the high levels of heavy elements inside Jupiter, the researchers said.
The study also revealed another interesting finding: Jupiter’s interior does not blend well in its upper atmosphere, which goes against what scientists previously expected. Jupiter’s new inner model shows that the heavy elements absorbed by the planet have been close to its core and the lower atmosphere. The researchers believed that convection confused Jupiter’s atmosphere, so that hotter gas near the planet’s core would rise to the outer atmosphere before it cooled and fell down again; if so, the heavy elements would mix more evenly throughout the atmosphere.
However, some regions of Jupiter may have little convection effect, and more research is needed to determine exactly what is happening within the atmosphere of the giant gas, Miguel said.
The researchers’ findings may also alter the original histories of other planets in the solar system. “Jupiter was the planet that had the greatest influence on the formation of the solar system,” Miguel said. Its gravitational pull helped shape the size and orbits of the cosmics around it, so determining how it was created has significant implications for other planets, he added. The findings also suggest the potential planetesimal origin of other giant gases in the solar system: Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Other gas worlds in other stellar systems may also have been formed by eating planetesimals instead of pebbles, which may have a higher metallicity than the appearance would suggest. That’s why it’s important when we find these new worlds, which are being searched through NASA James Webb Telescopewe don’t judge them by their cloud cover, the researchers said.
The study was published online on June 8 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics (Opens in new tab).
Originally published in Live Science.