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NASA's Juno probe sends back new images of Jupiter

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A

AdanVC

Member
Those pics are amazing! It's insane and scary that an average cloud storm in Jupiter is the size of the entire planet Earth... Just imagine being on the surface on the middle of a random storm in Jupiter... yikees!
 
P

Protein

Banned
via reddit
I answered a very similar question to this a few months ago, so copy-paste:
For the interior of Jupiter, let's imagine taking a descent from cloud-tops down to the core based on our best guesses of what lies below.

You start falling through the high, white ammonia clouds starting at 0.5 atmospheres, where the Sun is still visible. It's very cold here, -150 C (-240 F). Your rate of descent is roughly 2.5x that of Earth, since gravity is much stronger on Jupiter.
You emerge out the bottom of the cloud deck somewhere near 1 atmosphere. It's still somewhat bright, with sunlight filtering through the ammonia clouds much like an overcast day on Earth. Below, you see the second cloud-deck made of roiling brown ammonium hydrosulphide, starting about 2 atmospheres.

As you fall through the bottom of this second cloud deck, it's now quite dark, but warming up as the pressure increases. Beneath you are white water clouds forming towering thunderstorms, with the darkness punctuated by bright flashes of lightning starting somewhere around 5 atmospheres. As you pass through this third and final cloud-deck it's now finally warmed up to room temperature, if only the pressure weren't starting to crush you.

Emerging out the bottom, the pressure is now intense, and it's starting to get quite warm, and there's nothing but the dark abyss of ever-denser hydrogen gas beneath you. You fall through this abyss for a very, very long time.

You eventually start to notice that the atmosphere has become thick enough that you can swim through it. It's not quite liquid, not quite gas, but a "supercritical fluid" that shares properties of each. Your body would naturally stop falling and settle out somewhere at this level, where your density and the atmosphere's density are equal. However, you've brought your "heavy boots" and continue your descent.

After a very, very long time of falling through ever greater pressure and heat, there's no longer complete darkness. The atmosphere is now warm enough that it begins to glow - red-hot at first, then yellow-hot, and finally white-hot.

You're now 30% of the way down, and have just hit the metallic region at 2 million atmospheres of pressure. Still glowing white-hot, hydrogen has become so dense as to become a liquid metal. It roils and convects, generating strong magnetic fields in the process.

Most materials passing through this deep, deep ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen would instantly dissolve, but thankfully you've brought your unobtainium spacesuit...which is good, because it's now 10,000 C (18,000 F). Falling ever deeper through this hot glowing sea of liquid metal, you reflect that a mai tai would really hit the spot right about now.
After a very, very, very long time falling through this liquid metal ocean, you're now 80% of the way down...when suddenly your boots hit a solid "surface", insomuch as you can call it a surface. Beneath you is a core weighing in at 25 Earth-masses, made of rock and exotic ices that can only exist under the crushing pressure of 25 million atmospheres.
You check your cell phone to tell you friends about your voyage...but sadly, it melted in the metallic ocean - and besides, they only have 3G down here.
Click to expand...
 
WaterAstro

WaterAstro

Member
Protein said:
People are going to shit their pants when Jupiter turns out to be a dormant space amoeba and starts feeding on other planets.


Soon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3fqE01YYWs

90Rjr.jpg
Click to expand...

Don't worry. We'll take care of Jupiter.

UF2kKP1.gif
 
P

pa22word

Member
The Artisan said:
damn, I forgot how huge Jupiter is compared to where we live
Click to expand...

Pretty sure that scale is wrong, too. You should be able to fit three earths into the circumference of the dark spot, while the scaling of the image suggests that you'd be able to fit about one earth into it.


So yeah, Jupiter is fucking enormous.
 
J

jett

D-Member
They're just colorizing B&W pictures, right? Wish the JunoCam was better at taking regular pics. I almost feel like older pictures of Jupiter are of higher quality somehow. :p
 
Z

zero_suit

Member
Chronoja said:
Jupiter has shrugged off worse than anything we could ever throw at it



The Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet impact

"Over the next six days, 21 distinct impacts were observed, with the largest coming on July 18 at 07:33 UTC when fragment G struck Jupiter. This impact created a giant dark spot over 12,000 km across, and was estimated to have released an energy equivalent to 6,000,000 megatons of TNT 600 times the world's nuclear arsenal"
Click to expand...

Holy shit!
 
A

Angelus Errare

Banned
LookAtMeGo said:
Beautiful. Cant wait until we send humans there to colonize it.
Click to expand...

Yeeeaaaa...about that, a few small issues that prevent that from ever being a thing.

  1. No solid land mass
  2. Jupiter's wind speeds even at the slowest parts parts of the planet are in the 100s of mph.
  3. Jupiter's gravity (24.79 m/s²) would be a huge burden on an average weight man. Someone who weighs 100 pounds on earth is 252 pounds on Jupiter and it just gets worse and that's on top of not having a place to actually stand on.
 
mortal

mortal

Gold Member
Man, it's mesmerizing that something so gargantuan is just looming in a vast void like that. Space is the place.
 
A

astroturfing

Member
that south pole pic looks like a cell, with the lipid cell wall protecting the organelles etc inside. very cool convergent pattern formation.
 
G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Alex_Mexico said:
Huh? You implying taking pictures in a grey scale is better for research than a color one? I'm not following. And yes I'm an ignorant so I don't understand.
Click to expand...

Juno was built first and foremost for science. Not to take pictures. We already have pictures of Jupiter.

The camera was only added to keep public interest in the mission up. The radiation from Jupiter is going to destroy that camera, regardless of how good the camera is.

The biggest reason is the better the camera, the more bandwidth it would take up when sending back photos. Bandwidth needed to send back the scientific data.

Plus, it would cost more.
 
K

Kyaw

Member
Alex_Mexico said:
Huh? You implying taking pictures in a grey scale is better for research than a color one? I'm not following. And yes I'm an ignorant so I don't understand.
Click to expand...

Data storage on the spacecraft and transfer back to Earth is VERY limited, so taking pictures in monochrome is more efficient when you don't particularly care about the colours, just the general features. Plus, monochrome pictures can be recolored easily using information from images taken with Earth-based telescopes and other instrumentation data from the spacecraft such as spectroscopy data.

You gotta remember that almost all spacecraft in operation now is working with technology at least 5-10 years old.
 
A

adamsappel

Member
The Artisan said:
damn, I forgot how huge Jupiter is compared to where we live
Click to expand...
pa22word said:
Pretty sure that scale is wrong, too. You should be able to fit three earths into the circumference of the dark spot, while the scaling of the image suggests that you'd be able to fit about one earth into it.

So yeah, Jupiter is fucking enormous.
Click to expand...
And yet you can fit all the other planets in between the Earth and the Moon.

7KUZB1t.png
Click to expand...
 
M

MagicWithEarvin

Member
This stuff is incredible. I'm always thinking about life out there in space, my biggest curiousity out there. I really can't fathom the enormous amount of planets and galaxies, but just thinking about it makes me wish our tech can be at a position to fully explore these planets in our solar system.
 
S

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
Everyone should watch 2010. Not only is it underrated hard Sci fi (to a point) it's incredibly timely again re. Russia.

And the main character and monster...is Jupiter. It treats the world with appropriate awe and terror.
 
H

HomerSimpson-Man

Member
Jupiter so beautiful and fasinating and yet it somehow scares the hell out of me. Something about the irrational thought of it's massive shear size being like a gasious swirling void monster that the entirety of our planet call fall into if it doesn't burn up first.
 
L

LookAtMeGo

Member
Angelus Errare said:
Yeeeaaaa...about that, a few small issues that prevent that from ever being a thing.

  1. No solid land mass
  2. Jupiter's wind speeds even at the slowest parts parts of the planet are in the 100s of mph.
  3. Jupiter's gravity (24.79 m/s²) would be a huge burden on an average weight man. Someone who weighs 100 pounds on earth is 252 pounds on Jupiter and it just gets worse and that's on top of not having a place to actually stand on.
Click to expand...

What about a habitable dyson sphere type contraption in low Jupiter orbit that has atrificial gravity that can shoot pods down into its liquid hydrogen oceans for us to harvest and send back to motherbase earth?
I was kidding about colonizing Jupiter
 
Oppo

Oppo

Member
adamsappel said:
And yet you can fit all the other planets in between the Earth and the Moon.
Click to expand...

this is one of those things I had to look up when I first heard it. and yeah it's true more or less.

i like that pic because it gives proper scale. there's like, what, 3 earth-widths in the Great Spot on Jupiter alone?

space is... a lot of empty space
 
B

Billy_Pilgrim

Member
One of the things that makes me feel okay about getting old is that we're going to see so much amazing progress in space stuff.

The gif of the asteroid hitting Jupiter is incredible.
 
A

Angelus Errare

Banned
Nerfgun said:
this is one of those things I had to look up when I first heard it. and yeah it's true more or less.

i like that pic because it gives proper scale. there's like, what, 3 earth-widths in the Great Spot on Jupiter alone?

space is... a lot of empty space
Click to expand...

craziest part is if you switched the position of moon and say Saturn, it'd have a pretty big effect on earth lol.
 
L

LookAtMeGo

Member
Has Juno got any shots of Jupiters rings yet?

Billy_Pilgrim said:
One of the things that makes me feel okay about getting old is that we're going to see so much amazing progress in space stuff.

The gif of the asteroid hitting Jupiter is incredible.
Click to expand...
Yeah that is incredible. Shoemaker Levi would have wrecked Earth for sure. I love that Jupiter is like Earths guardian against so many comets and asteroids.
 
M

Mrbob

Member
jett said:
Jupiter's massive gravitational pull attracts all kinds of crap. It has probably saved us from extinction multiple times by slinging away comets and asteroids that could've been on a collision course to Earth.
Click to expand...
Jupiter is Earth's rim protector.
 
A

A-V-B

Member
Chronoja said:
Jupiter has shrugged off worse than anything we could ever throw at it



The Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet impact

"Over the next six days, 21 distinct impacts were observed, with the largest coming on July 18 at 07:33 UTC when fragment G struck Jupiter. This impact created a giant dark spot over 12,000 km across, and was estimated to have released an energy equivalent to 6,000,000 megatons of TNT (600 times the world's nuclear arsenal)"
Click to expand...

Jupiter is Earth's big bro. Suckin' up all those world ending comets.
 
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