Why does Jupiter change its stripes?  

Scientists believe they have an explanation

Our solar system’s gas giant planet often changes appearance, alternating between bands of dark and bright clouds covering it, but why this happens remains a mystery.

Now, scientists who studied Jupiter’s magnetic field through data collected by the Juno spacecraft believe they have the answer to the question, as the changes we see in Jupiter’s “stripes” coincide with changes in the planet’s magnetic field.

It is possible for there to be undulating motions in a planetary magnetic field called torsional vibrations. The interesting thing is that when we calculated the periods of these torsional vibrations, they correspond to the periods we see infrared radiation on Jupiter.

From afar, Jupiter looks like a calm cluster of soft colors. But these streaks are caused by the planet’s intense weather, with some streaks traveling against Jupiter’s rotation and others with it. And all this at different altitudes.

Every four to five years things change. The colors of the stripes change and sometimes you see global upheaval with the whole weather system going crazy and it’s always been a mystery why that happens.

Juno has been studying Jupiter since 2016 and has collected a wealth of data. Studying the data, the scientists came to the following conclusion.

We therefore propose that these torsional vibrations disrupt the slow flow in the deep interior that transports heat to the visible troposphere.

This causes a huge upheaval in weather patterns and changes Jupiter’s cloud patterns. Studying Jupiter further to see how the clouds change will allow scientists to confirm this theory.

There are still uncertainties and questions, especially in how exactly the torsional vibrations produce this change in the infrared spectrum, which probably also shows the complex dynamics of aerosol reactions. There we need more research. However, we hope our research will open a window into the exploration of Jupiter’s hidden interior, as seismology has done for Earth.

The research was published in Nature .