Jupiter and the winds lose a little of their mystery

Photo AFP
The south pole of Jupiter

AFP

Wednesday, march 7, 2018 13:33

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Wednesday, march 7, 2018 13:33

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Paris | The winds that form the cloud bands to the surface of the gas planet Jupiter drive in on 3000 miles: the depth of these bands, one of the mysteries of the largest planet in the solar system, has been unveiled thanks to the probe, Juno, according to Nature.

Seen from space, Jupiter is divided into horizontal stripes of warm colors, which rotate at different speeds. These bands are created by the crowns of stellar wind flowing alternately to the east and to the west.

But the mechanism of these bands and their depth remained a mystery to astronomers.

“This is a big step. Now, we understand that the planets, the gaseous giant are composed of a center of the uniform rotation ( … ), and an outer shell composed of areas which rotate at different speeds, ” explains the AFP Tristan Guillot of the Observatoire de la Côte d’azur in France, co-author of three studies published Wednesday in the british journal.

“We found that the winds, as they appear on the surface, extend over approximately 3000 km below the level of the clouds,” says Yohai Caspian of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, lead author of one of the studies.

The atmosphere of Jupiter would represent approximately 1% of the total mass of the planet. “In comparison, the atmosphere of the Earth is less than a millionth of the mass of the Earth,” says Yohai Caspian.

The fact that the winds from entering this considerable distance would help to explain the surprising asymmetry in north-south of the gravity fields of Jupiter.

According to these studies, the researchers were able to establish that the core of Jupiter is very different from what the world reveals its surface: it would consist of a mixture fluid of hydrogen and helium, turning, him, evenly, a little, as would a solid body.

The probe u.s. space Juno was able to fly also the poles of Jupiter and is closer than 5000 km above the cloud layer in its upper atmosphere.

From these data, processed in a fourth article, Alberto Adriani from the national Institute of astrophysics in Italy and his colleagues argue that at the north pole, eight cyclones revolve around a single large cyclone. While the south pole is surrounded by five of these hurricanes giants, “The structures of cyclone that we observe around the poles of Jupiter don’t exist around any other planet in the solar system,” explains Alberto Adriani. But their origins and their incredible duration of life remain unexplained.

“A better understanding of Jupiter, which is very likely to be the first planet formed from the solar nebula, is a first step towards the understanding of the formation of our solar system itself,” underlines Alberto Adriani.