Secrets of the planet Jupiter. Jupiter's mysteries will be solved. Could life develop on Jupiter's Europa

It is probably difficult to imagine conditions that are more different for an earthly inhabitant than those that exist on planets like Jupiter. If, looking at Mars, one can imagine that millions of years ago its dusty surface could be covered with forests and oceans, then there is no need to talk about the presence of at least some similarity between the Earth and gas giants. Celestial bodies of this class are extremely difficult to study, so the structure and composition of Jupiter largely remain a mystery that humanity is trying to learn, based on fragmentary knowledge accumulated by long and painstaking work.

When they talk about Jupiter clouds, the imagination tries to draw quite earthly pictures with white “lambs” peacefully escaping beyond the horizon line or, at worst, dark purple thunderclouds gradually covering the sky. Both of these are far from reality. According to scientists, what the earthly observer takes for the “surface” of the planet is the icy ammonia vapor that densely enveloped Jupiter. Below are crystals of ammonium hydrogen sulfide, and even deeper - frozen water crystals. The latter can also be present in the liquid phase in the form of a fine dispersion. All this “layer cake” tightly closes the planet from the observer, and one can only guess what is happening below.

Hurricanes in the atmosphere

Hurricanes raging in Jupiter's atmosphere at speeds of over 600 km/h, and turbulent flows and eddies rising from below mix the cloud masses, drawing bizarre patterns in the form of stripes and spots. The movement of flows in the atmosphere of a gas giant, unlike the Earth, is fed by the internal energy of the planet, so the patterns formed have fairly stable geometric dimensions, which change slightly during the period of their observation.

big red spot

The nature of these phenomena has been studied very poorly, and at the moment there is no single coherent theory explaining the emergence and long-term existence of stripes and spots in the atmosphere of Jupiter.

Modern ideas about the structure and composition of Jupiter

An artist's drawing depicting the release of the Galileo probe into the atmosphere of Jupiter, on the right, the artist drew the release of the probe's protective heat shield

Most scientists are inclined to think that the giant of the solar system consists of an atmosphere, a core and an intermediate layer. The main chemical elements present on Jupiter are hydrogen and helium. But the results of the mission of the Galileo spacecraft, which dropped a probe onto the planet at the end of 1995, also confirmed the presence of argon, krypton, carbon and nitrogen, and a number of other gases. The outer layer of the giant's atmosphere is formed by hydrogen gas, on average, helium is added (in a ratio of 1 to 9), and in the lower layer - ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide and water, which form the cloud cover of the planet.

metallic hydrogen

Below is an "ocean" consisting of metallic hydrogen. This chemical element can take on such a structure under the influence of high pressures and temperatures. Ideas about metallic hydrogen are purely theoretical and it has not yet been possible to obtain it in laboratory conditions. According to scientists, it is a superfluid and superconducting liquid that can form at pressures of the order of a million atmospheres. It is assumed that after the pressure is removed, the properties of the resulting structure can be preserved.

The thickness of such a liquid-metal layer of the planet is estimated at 42–46 thousand km. The presence of liquid helium in it is not excluded. There is no clear boundary between the atmosphere and the layer of metallic hydrogen, but there is a boundary turbulent zone, 7–25 thousand km thick, in which the phase state of this chemical element changes.

planet core

The dimensions of Jupiter's core are estimated to be about 1.5 times the diameter of the Earth, and the temperature and pressure in it reach 30,000 K and 100 million atmospheres. It is assumed that it consists of various metals and silicates, and its mass is approximately 10–15 Earth's. Thanks to the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism, such a core is able to provide heat to the processes occurring in the upper layers of the planet, feeding them with the energy accumulated during compression.

Four scientific papers on the findings of the Juno mission. Let me remind you that since the summer of 2016, this device has been in orbit around Jupiter. The main task of Juno is to study the internal structure of the gas giant and its magnetosphere.

The data collected by Juno suggests that Jupiter's gravitational field is asymmetrical in the north-south direction. Researchers attribute this fact to the movement of gas flows in the planet's atmosphere. The flows at the north and south poles of Jupiter can carry different masses of matter, which explains the unevenness of the gravitational field.

Juno also managed to measure the depth of Jupiter's famous cloud belts, which can be seen even with an amateur telescope. Measurements showed that their thickness is about 3,000 km. The cloud belts account for about 1% of the mass of the gas giant. This is more than three times the mass of the Earth. For comparison, the earth's atmosphere accounts for only 1/1000,000 of the mass of our planet.

Due to Jupiter's fast rotation period (about 10 hours), the planet's cloud belts are shaped like nested cylinders. Deeper than 3000 km, atmospheric flows are destroyed. Perhaps they are slowed down by Jupiter's strong magnetic field. The Juno data show that below this mark, the nature of the rotation of the planet's matter already corresponds to a solid body.

Another amazing find is related to the poles of Jupiter. Using the JIRAM (Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper) instrument, Juno obtained infrared images of atmospheric formations located 50 to 70 km below the planet's cloud cover. It turned out that the central cyclone dominates at the north pole of Jupiter, surrounded by eight smaller cyclones with diameters from 4000 to 4600 km. Together they form a figure resembling an octagon. The south pole also has a dominant central cyclone. Around it there are five cyclones with a diameter of 5600 to 7000 km, forming a pentagonal figure.

Computer images showing the structure of cyclones at Jupiter's north and south poles

Cyclones drift very slowly around the poles and, despite their close proximity to each other, maintain amazing stability, not breaking up or merging together. According to scientists, they have not observed anything like it on any other planet in the solar system.

To date, Juno has completed 10 of its planned 12 scientific orbits around Jupiter. The next time the station will approach the gas giant on April 1. According to the plan, after completing its main scientific program, the device should be deorbited and sent into the planet's atmosphere. This event could take place in the summer. But given the good technical condition of the station and the data it has collected, it is possible that NASA will decide to extend the Juno mission.

In ancient Roman mythology, Jupiter is identified with the Greek Zeus. He is often referred to as "God the Father" or "Father of the Gods". Jupiter was the son of Saturn, the brother of Neptune, and the sister of Juno, who was also his wife. In turn, the planet Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.

Ironically, a spacecraft with the name "Juno" was sent to Jupiter for "matchmaking". And while the probe has yet to reveal many of the secrets of its "narrowed", we will consider a few already known facts about this gas giant.

Jupiter could become a star

In 1610, Galileo discovered Jupiter and its four largest moons: Europa, Io, Callisto and Ganymede, which today are called the Galilean satellites. This was the first time that a space object was observed orbiting a planet. Previously, observations were made only of the Moon revolving around the Earth. Later, thanks to this very observation, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus gave weight to his theory that the Earth is not the center of the universe. This is how the heliocentric model of the world appeared.

As the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter has a mass that is 2 times the mass of all other planets in the solar system. Jupiter's atmosphere is more like that of a star than a planet, and is made up mostly of hydrogen and helium. Scientists agree that if the reserves of these elements were 80 times more, then Jupiter would turn into a real star. And with four main moons and many (67 in total) smaller moons, Jupiter itself is almost a miniature copy of its own solar system. This planet is so huge that it would take more than 1,300 Earth-sized planets to fill the volume of this gas giant.

The amazing color of Jupiter consists of light and dark belt zones, which, in turn, are caused by constant powerful winds blowing from east to west at a speed of 650 km per hour. Areas with light clouds in the upper atmosphere contain frozen, crystallized ammonia particles. Darker clouds contain different chemical elements. These climatic features are constantly changing and never linger for long intervals.

In addition to the fact that it often rains real diamonds on Jupiter, another famous feature of this gas giant is its huge red spot. This spot is a giant hurricane rotating counterclockwise. The size of this hurricane is almost three times the diameter of the earth. The wind speed in the center of the hurricane reaches 450 km per hour. The giant red spot is constantly changing in size, either increasing and becoming even brighter, or decreasing and becoming dimmer.

Amazing magnetic field

The strength of Jupiter's magnetic field is almost 20,000 times stronger than the strength of the Earth's magnetic field. Jupiter can rightfully be considered the king of the magnetic fields of our planetary system. The planet is surrounded by an incredible field of electrically charged particles that non-stop bombarding other planets in the solar system. At the same time, the level of radiation near Jupiter is up to 1,000 times higher than the lethal one for humans. The radiation density is so strong that it can cause damage even to well-protected spacecraft.

Jupiter's magnetosphere has a length of 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 km towards the Sun and up to 1 billion km towards the outer boundaries of the system.

Jupiter is the king of rotation

It only takes Jupiter about 10 hours to complete a full rotation on its axis. Days on Jupiter range from 9 hours 56 minutes at both poles to 9 hours 50 minutes at the gas giant's equatorial zone. As a result of this feature, the equatorial zone of the planet is 7 percent wider than the polar ones.

As a gas giant, Jupiter does not rotate as a single solid spherical object, such as, for example, the Earth. Instead, the planet rotates somewhat faster in the equatorial zone and slightly slower in the polar regions. The total rotation speed in this case is about 50,000 km per hour, which is 27 times faster than the Earth's rotation speed.

largest source of radio waves

Another feature of Jupiter that boggles the imagination is how powerful radio waves it emits. Jupiter's radio noise even affects shortwave antennas here on Earth. Radio waves that are not audible to the human ear can acquire very bizarre audio signals due to ground radio equipment picking them up.

Most often, these radio bursts are produced as a result of the instability of the plasma field in the gas giant's magnetosphere. Often these noises cause a stir among ufologists who believe that they have caught signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. Most astrophysicists theorize that the ion gases above Jupiter and its magnetic fields sometimes behave like very powerful radio lasers, emitting radiation so dense that Jupiter's radio signals sometimes outshine the Sun's shortwave radio signals. Scientists believe that such a special power of radio emission is somehow connected with the volcanic satellite Io.

NASA was very surprised when the Voyager 1 spacecraft discovered three rings around Jupiter's equator in 1979. These rings are much dimmer than Saturn's, and therefore impossible to detect with ground-based equipment.

The main ring is flat and about 30 km thick and about 6,000 km wide. The inner ring - even more rarefied and often referred to as a halo - is about 20,000 km thick. The halo of this inner ring almost reaches the outer limits of the planet's atmosphere. In this case, both rings are composed of tiny dark particles.

The third ring is even more transparent than the other two and is called the "spider ring". It consists mainly of dust that accumulates around the four moons of Jupiter: Adrastea, Metis, Amalthea and Thebes. The radius of the web ring reaches about 130,000 km. Planetologists believe that the rings of Jupiter, like those of Saturn, could have been formed as a result of collisions of numerous space objects, such as asteroids and comets.

planetary protector

Since Jupiter is the second largest (the first place belongs to the Sun) space objects in the solar system, its gravitational forces most likely participated in the final formation of our system and probably even allowed the emergence of life on our planet.

According to the study, Jupiter may once have pulled Uranus and Neptune to where they are now in the system. In a study published in the journal Science, it is said that Jupiter, with the participation of Saturn, attracted enough material at the dawn of the solar system to form the planets of the inner boundary.

In addition, scientists are confident that the gas giant is a kind of shield against asteroids and comets, reflecting them from other planets. Jupiter's gravitational field affects many asteroids and changes their orbits. Thanks to this, many of these objects do not fall on the planets, including our Earth. These asteroids are called "Trojan asteroids". Three of them, the largest, are known as Hector, Achilles and Agamemnon and are named after the heroes of Homer's Iliad, which describes the events of the Trojan War.

Jupiter's and Earth's cores are the same size

Scientists are firmly convinced that the inner core of Jupiter is 10 times smaller than the entire planet Earth. At the same time, there is an assumption that up to 80-90 percent of the core diameter falls on liquid metallic hydrogen. If we take into account that the diameter of the Earth is about 13,000 km, then the diameter of Jupiter's core should be about 1,300 km. And this, in turn, puts it on a par with the radius of the inner solid core of the Earth, which is also about 1,300 km.

Atmosphere of Jupiter. Dream or nightmare of a chemist?

Jupiter's atmospheric composition is 89.2 percent molecular hydrogen and 10.2 percent helium. The remaining percentages are stocks of ammonia, deuterium, methane, ethane, water, ammonia ice particles, and ammonium sulfide particles. In general: an explosive mixture is clearly unsuitable for human life.

Since Jupiter's magnetic field is 20,000 times stronger than Earth's, it is most likely that the gas giant has a very dense inner core of unknown composition, covered with a thick outer layer of helium-rich liquid metallic hydrogen. And all this is "wrapped" in an atmosphere, mainly consisting of molecular hydrogen. Well, just a true gas giant.

Calisto - long-suffering companion

Callisto, Jupiter's second largest moon

Another interesting feature of Jupiter is its moon called Calisto. Calisto is the most distant of the four Galilean satellites. It takes one Earth week to complete one revolution around Jupiter. Since its orbit lies outside the gas giant's radiation belt, Callisto suffers less from tidal forces than other Galilean satellites. But since Kilisto is a tidally locked moon, like our Moon, for example, one of its sides always faces Jupiter.

The diameter of Calisto is 5,000 km, which is about the size of the planet Mercury. After Ganymede and Titan, Calisto is the third largest moon in the solar system (our moon is fifth on this list, and Io is fourth). The temperature on the surface of Calisto is at minus 139 degrees Celsius.
Calisto was discovered by the great astronomer Galileo Galilei and actually deprived him of a peaceful life. The discovery of Calisto contributed to the strengthening of faith in his heliocentric theory and added fuel to the fire of the astronomer's already burning conflict with the Catholic Church.

In modern times, planetary scientists are confident that we will be able to detect life on Europa (Jupiter's satellite) rather than on Mars. This cosmic body has a lot of unsolved mysteries. To date, it is known that under the thick ice crust of Europa there is a liquid ocean that is quite suitable for the origin of life, warm and relatively safe.

Very often, articles appear on the Internet that living creatures similar to our fish and mammals live under the icy surface of Europe. Sometimes such theories are supported by photographs of dolphins we know. Of course, we would be pleased to meet familiar mammals on other planets, but if we talk from a scientific point of view, then most likely they will not be in the ocean of the satellite. No one denies that life may be present there, but it will most likely have its own form, special and unique.

Some general information

Europa is one of the four giant moons located near the planet Jupiter. In total, this planet has sixteen satellites, but most of them do not deserve special attention, since they are relatively small. Europa's orbit has an elongated shape, so it periodically approaches its planet, and then moves away from it. During the approach, the gravity of the huge Jupiter acts on Europa. Thus, Europe with constant periodicity is compressed and unclenched. This heats up its internal ocean, making it habitable for a variety of micro-organisms.

Planetologists and astrophysicists are sure that in the central part of Europe (a moon of Jupiter) there is a core covered with rocks. Behind it is an ocean with liquid water, the depth of which reaches 100 kilometers. The surface layer of Europe is ice, the thickness of which is equal to 10-30 km. The temperature on the surface of the Jupiter satellite is equal to -160⁰ Celsius.

Due to the incredibly deep ocean, covered with a thick layer of ice, the surface of the Jupiter satellite is considered the smoothest in our planetary system. Looking at the images of Europa, one can notice many kilometers of stripes covering the ice surface, as well as ridges, bulges and concave areas of various types. These "bumps" are direct evidence of the presence of water under the ice of Jupiter's moon.

The most interesting phenomenon on Europa is called darkened lines that literally encircle the satellite up and down. The width of these formations can reach up to twenty kilometers. Planetologists believe that these are traces of cracks in the crust, through which liquid made its way to the surface. They explain the color of the stripes by the fact that the products of the vital activity of the underwater inhabitants of Europe, which, most likely, are bacteria and other microorganisms, could have reacted with ice.

Could life develop on Jupiter's Europa

Solar ultraviolet rays "treat" the surface of the Jupiter satellite regularly. They melt ice, splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen. The lightest hydrogen evaporates almost instantly, while the heavier oxygen lingers for some time on the surface of Europa. Through the cracks and crevices in the crust, which were mentioned above, oxygen can penetrate into the ocean of the Jupiter satellite. Thus, inside Europa there is liquid water, which regularly mixes with oxygen, and from the depths of this Jupiterian neighbor, heat is constantly coming out, warming up its ocean.

D. Berne, a well-known planetary scientist, says the following about the possibility of life in the ocean of Europe:

For decades, we have believed that three factors are necessary for the formation and development of life - water, light and atmosphere. But at the bottom of the sea, for example, there are no last two conditions. Despite this, life exists there, and quite normally. Thus, the last two conditions for the formation of life can be discarded. In the ocean of Europa (Jupiter's satellite), alien life may well exist, similar to our tube worms and molluscs, which exist perfectly on the sea and ocean floor.

T. Gold, who also works as a planetary scientist and is interested in alien life, states:

The most tenacious creatures on our planet are microorganisms. They are the ones who rule the world. If someone can exist on other planets, then it is they - various microbes. In the ocean of Europe, there are ideal conditions for them.

When will the secret of Europe be revealed?

NASA has begun developing the latest Clipper project, aimed at studying Jupiter's neighbor. The budget for this project was estimated at $2 billion. This project was planned to be implemented in the 2020s, but so far it has been frozen due to the crisis. In addition, the ESA agency paid attention to Jupiter and its satellites, whose representatives plan to launch vehicles to the above planet in 2025-30.

Our distant neighbor Jupiter harbors secrets that could reveal a lot about how the solar system came into being.
NASA's Juno spacecraft has already reached the orbit of the gas giant, and it is hoped that this project will provide answers to some questions.

In 2022, the European Space Agency plans to launch its own space probe to explore Jupiter's moons. Swedish scientists are participating in the project.

Context

Jupiter with its movements gave way to the Earth

Astrobiology Magazine 06/26/2015

Jupiter may have contributed to the formation of the Earth

Scientific American 04/02/2015

Pavel Globa: “Jupiter above us is the planet of kings”

Saturday 01/13/2010 "We are investigating the habitability of icy moons," says program leader Jan-Erik Wahlund of Uppsala University.

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun. There is nothing surprising in the fact that it is called a gas giant: if you add up the mass of all the other planets in the solar system, the mass of Jupiter will still be twice as large.

The planet was named after the most powerful of the gods of the Roman pantheon. From Earth, it can be seen with the naked eye, so the planet has been known since ancient times, albeit under different names.

In the course of history, we learned more and more about our huge neighbor. The Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who is called the father of modern astronomy, was one of the first to observe Jupiter.

Galileo was among the first scientists to use a telescope to study the vault of heaven. One day he heard about a Dutch invention called the "magic tube" and in 1609 he built his own telescope.

A year later, in 1610, he made a number of important discoveries. Galileo located stars that were not visible to the naked eye, discovered mountains on the moon, and discovered the four largest satellites of Jupiter.

The satellites were named Io, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto, and they are still called the "Galilean satellites" in honor of the discoverer.

Spacecraft in orbit

Jupiter is on everyone's lips again today. On August 5, 2011, the American space agency NASA sent the Juno satellite to him.

Juno had come a long way, and she had only one chance to enter the orbit of the planet. A little less than a month ago, the spacecraft managed to get on course in what was described as a critical maneuver.

A week later, Juno sent back to Earth the first photographs taken by the Junocam color camera on board. One of the first blurry images shows Jupiter and the three Galilean moons Europa, Io and Ganymede. As it approaches the gas giant, the probe will be able to take sharper and clearer images and eventually photograph the planet's surface.

Juno makes one orbit around Jupiter in its current orbit in 53 days. The device will remain in orbit for 20 months, that is, it will complete 37 orbits around the planet.

Of course, in addition to beautiful photographs, NASA has other goals. The space agency's website says the mission of the project is to try to figure out how Jupiter came into being. Thus, there will be a chance to find out new details about the origin of our solar system.

Does Jupiter have a nucleus?

There is a theory that the solar system arose as a result of the collapse of a huge gas and dust cloud, that is, a nebula, about 4.6 billion years ago.

The cloud rotated and cooled until the sun and planets formed from it.

Like the Sun, Jupiter is mostly made up of hydrogen and helium. Therefore, scientists believe that this planet arose early and on the basis of material left after the appearance of the Sun.

But this is just a hypothesis. Astronomers do not yet have an exact answer to the question of how everything really happened. There is an assumption that the planet arose when the gravity of a solid core began to attract material towards itself. According to another theory, the emergence of Jupiter caused the collapse of an unstable region of the nebula.

NASA wants to know if Jupiter has a solid core, and scientists will try to find out by measuring the amount of water and ammonia in the planet's atmosphere.

Juno will collect data on Jupiter's gravity and magnetic field. This will allow us to calculate the probable mass and structure of the nucleus.

If we can find answers to these questions, it will be possible to draw new conclusions about the origin and history of our solar system.

Swedes in Jupiter exploration

NASA isn't the only one interested in Jupiter. In 2014, the European Space Agency also decided to send a spacecraft there.

Of course, the project arose as a result of thorough scientific work. The decision to launch the program was taken only after four years of detailed research on the topic.

Currently, scientists are engaged in planning, as well as constructing a spacecraft and its equipment. The device will be called Juice (short for Jupiter icy moons explorer). The project involves representatives of almost all European countries, as well as Japan and the United States.

Juice will hit the road no earlier than 2022. It will be equipped with ten measuring instruments, two of which will be made in Sweden. The first, PEP (Particle Enviroment Package), is being built at the Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna, the second, RPWI (Radio Plasma Wave Investigation), is being built at a similar institute in Uppsala.

The project is led by Jan-Erik Walund. His team is now busy building one of several prototypes that will have to go through a series of tests before scientists construct the final version of the instrument in 2019.

“The device will measure electric and magnetic fields, as well as electrically charged gas,” explains the project leader.

The main goal is to make measurements around the surfaces of the moons of Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, centered on Ganymede. The spacecraft will go into orbit around a satellite in the outer solar system, emphasizes Jan-Erik Walund.

In other words, NASA will focus on the exploration of the planet, while the European Space Organization will take care of its satellites.
Europeans also want to find answers to the question of how the solar system arose.

“Jupiter can be said to be a solar system in miniature. At first it was very hot, like a red dwarf, but it went out without becoming a star. In addition, Jupiter has more than 60 moons,” says Jan-Erik Walund.

There may be life

Jupiter's moons are interesting for several reasons.

It is assumed that oceans are hidden under the ice crust on the surface of large celestial bodies. Like it or not, it will become clear after the magnetic and electric fields are measured.

It is hoped that it will be possible to get closer to the answer to the question of whether life can exist on any of the satellites. Of course, we are not talking about aliens from a Hollywood movie, but about single-celled organisms.

“Actually, what we are looking for on icy satellites is not life, but habitability. I do not think that we will find living organisms, for this we would have to cut through the ice, ”comments Valund.

But Jupiter isn't in the next yard, so it's going to be a long flight through space. If Juice hits the road in 2022, as planned, it will be eight years before it is calculated to arrive at its destination in 2030. And in another five years it will be disposed of on Ganymede.

"Exciting. Flying to Jupiter is something that only happens once in a lifetime,” says Jan-Erik Walund.