Heat wave covers entire Jupiter (VIDEO)
It is 10 times the size of Earth
A Colossal Heat Wave Covers Jupiter’s Atmosphere! It is 130,000 kilometers from end to end, reaches 700 degrees Celsius and travels at a speed of 2,400 meters per second. This fact gives scientists a unique opportunity to explain one of the biggest mysteries of our solar system, why Jupiter is much warmer than what climate models predict.
Scientists suspect that the permanent auroras we find at the poles may provide the extra energy to heat the gas giant to temperatures we don’t expect.
Jupiter is five times farther from the Sun than Earth is, receiving only 4% of the solar radiation we receive. Its upper atmosphere was supposed to be around -73 degrees Celsius, but it’s actually 420 degrees Celsius, about the same as Earth’s. This means that something else is taking place.
Jupiter’s auroras, invisible to the human eye, form just like they do on Earth. An interaction of charged particles, magnetic fields and molecules in the planet’s atmosphere. Unlike ours, however, Jupiter’s are permanent and are produced by the interaction of particles with the moon Io, the most volcanic object in the Solar System, which constantly emits sulfur dioxide. This creates an arc of plasma around Jupiter which is channeled to its poles via magnetic field lines, from where it enters the atmosphere, forming the aurora.
While auroras continuously provide heat to the rest of the planet, these heat waves reveal an additional, important source of energy. These findings add to our knowledge of the phenomena of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and its climate and help solve the problem of the “energy crisis” that researches on these massive planets have.
Likewise, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus are all hundreds of degrees Celsius hotter than solar heating can provide.
The team presented their findings at the Europlanet Science Congress 2022 .
