Scientists Reveal

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. If you say Jupiter, you are correct. However, the planet is not just huge; it contains lots of mysteries that have been fascinating scientists since its discovery. Thanks to multiple spacecraft visiting the planet, we've expanded our knowledge of the jumbo planet significantly. What have scientists recently discovered on Jupiter, and how did the discoveries affect the Sun and our planet? In this video, we bring you the insane discoveries scientists just made from the images of Jupiter sent to Earth.

Jupiter is as massive as planets get. In fact, the planet is used to describe other large planets in the universe. Just how massive is this planet? While Jupiter is 318 times more massive than planet Earth, it's two and a half times more massive than the rest of the planets in the solar system combined.

There is one interestingly ironic thing that scientists have discovered about Jupiter. If the planet gets larger, it will actually become smaller. How come? Well, additional mass would actually make the planet denser, and this would cause it to start pulling itself in. However, astronomers estimate that Jupiter could grow to four times its current mass and still remain about the same size. Apparently, Jupiter has found a unique solution to its weight problem.

There is something else about Jupiter's mass that is fascinating. While Jupiter has a lot in common with stars, it cannot become a star. In fact, it is safe to call Jupiter a failed star. You see, like a star, Jupiter is rich in hydrogen and helium, but the jumbo planet does not have nearly enough mass to trigger a fusion reaction in its core. In case you were not aware, this is how stars generate their energy; they fuse hydrogen atoms together under extreme heat and pressure to create helium, releasing light and heat in the process. For this process to start, a potential star needs a huge amount of gravity. For Jupiter to reach this stage and ignite a nuclear fusion process and become a star, it would need more than 70 times its current mass. However, if you could somehow crash dozens of Jupiters together, you might have a chance to ignite a new star. But since that is not happening, Jupiter is not going all-star runners and shall remain an oversized planet in the Solar System.

Jupiter is huge, but it's also bright. It is the third brightest object in the solar system after Venus and the moon, of course. That's not counting the sun. Jupiter is big and bright, so much so that you can see it without the aid of a magnifier. In fact, most people have seen Jupiter in the sky, even if they don't know they're seeing the planet or mistake it for a star. With a simple telescope with a modest amount of magnification, you might spot some of its moons. Since you can see Jupiter so well, so could the ancient people before us.

Jupiter has been known to humans for thousands of years. It has been featured in the mythological and astrological belief systems of multiple cultures. The planet was first mentioned in recorded literature during the Babylonian Empire between the 7th and 8th centuries BCE. History buffs will be excited to learn that the Greco-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy constructed his famous geocentric planetary model that contained deference and epicycles to explain the orbit of Jupiter relative to the Earth. The second century even stated Jupiter's orbital period in his work known as the Helmer jest. That is 4332.38 Earth Day days or 11.86 Earth years. But Ptolemy wasn't the only ancient person to calculate Jupiter's orbit. Back in 499, Aryabhata. Mercury's fate appears to be sealed due to its eccentric orbit. The simulation predicts that the planet's orbit may extend into the path of Venus, or it might fall into the sun. According to the simulation, there are four possibilities awaiting Mercury if Jupiter continues to exert a gravitational pull on it. Mercury could crash into the sun or be ejected from the solar system. Alternatively, Mercury could crash into Venus or Earth. The latter option is the worst-case scenario for Earth. However, even the other scenarios would be bad news for Mercury.

If Mercury smashes into Earth, it won't be the first celestial object to do so. The asteroid that most likely wiped out the dinosaurs when it impacted the Earth will seem like a drop in the ocean compared to a planet with a diameter of 4880 kilometres slamming into Earth. After this impact, there will be very little left. Hopefully, by that time, Elon Musk would have started his Mars colonisation effort, as that is the only scenario where

Solidified lava flows and sand flowing, effusive lava streams, and Snows of sulfur dioxide. The group of researchers actually use mathematical equations to simulate the forces on a single grain of basalt or frost and calculate its path. When lava flows into sulfur dioxide beneath the moon's surface, its venting is dense and fast moving enough to move grains on iO and possibly enable the formation of large-scale features like Dunes. After devising or duplicating the mechanism by which the dunes could form, the researchers checked the photos of an iO surface taken by the Galileo spacecraft for corroboration. The spacing of the crest and the height to width ratios they observed were consistent with trends for dunes seen on Earth and other planets.

One of the wonders of Jupiter is the Great Red Spot. In fact, it is one of the defining features of the planet. This feature is an anti-cyclonic storm found on the south of its equator. While it appears small when viewed from the Earth, this storm actually measures between 24,000 kilometers in diameter and 12,000 to 14,000 kilometers in height. This is a storm you want to avoid at all costs. At this size, it is large enough to swallow two or three planets the size of Earth's diameter. One thing about the Great Red Spot is its longevity. It has been around for at least 350 years. This is because it was spotted for the first time in the 17th century. The credit for the discovery of the Great Red Spot goes to Giovanni Cassini, who saw it in 1665. Although he wasn't sure of what it was, by the 20th century, astronomers have begun to theorize that it was a storm that was formed as a result of Jupiter's turbulent fast-moving atmosphere. These hypotheses were confirmed when the Voyager 1 spacecraft had a close observation of the planet during a flyby in 1979. Since then, scientists say this storm has been shrinking. It has come down to its present size from about 40,000 kilometres based on Cassini's records, which would mean it's now half of its former size. Will the Great Red Spot ever disappear? Nobody knows for sure if and when it will do so. However, they are sure that another storm will form somewhere else on this vast planet.

Now, if you've heard of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, are you aware that there is a great blue spot on the planet as well? What is the great blue spot all about? It is magnetic. A team of NASA researchers, including Jack Coney, came up with the most detailed map of the planet's magnetic field, and it revealed something spectacular. The map is compiled from data obtained from 32 orbits during Juno's Prime mission. The group of researchers claimed their new map provides new insights into Jupiter's mysterious great blue spot, a magnetic anomaly, and the planet's equator. Juno data indicate that a change in the gas giant's magnetic field has occurred during the spacecraft's five years in orbit. What is happening is that the great blue spot is drifting eastward at a speed of about two inches or four centimeters per second relative to the rest of Jupiter's interior. At that rate, the great blue spot will go around the planet completely in about 350 years. In contrast, the more popular Great Red Spot, the long-lived atmospheric anti-cyclone just south of Jupiter's equator that refused to die, is drifting westward at a relatively rapid clip going around the planet in only about four and a half years.

Apart from this, the new map shows that Jupiter's zonal winds are pulling the great blue spot apart. Z

humans would continue to exist. Sadly, even Musk's efforts may not save humanity, as the sun is more likely to turn into a red giant and swallow Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars altogether.

Jupiter, instead of being a protective big brother to Earth, puts us in harm's way. Using computer simulation, scientists have found that the largest planet in our solar system's gravity hurls deadly asteroids towards us, instead of keeping them away, as previously assumed. A paper by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggested that evidence shows Jupiter was not a protector planet. Using its own gravity to suck asteroids away from Earth's path, Jupiter's gravity may actually nudge some asteroids toward the sun, where they stand a chance of colliding with Earth.

For many years, the relationship between Earth and Jupiter has been shaped by the Jupiter Shield Theory, which posits that the larger planet acts like a giant space shield due to its huge mass, which causes it to suck in or deflect dangerous debris. However, the Shield Theory is slowly falling out of favor. Thanks to the work of Kevin Grazia, who published several papers explaining why he thinks Jupiter is a sniper rather than a shield, new evidence proves that Jupiter is just as likely to take objects that come nowhere near Earth and fling them in our direction. Overall, Jupiter is our friend because it slings most of the comets coming from outside the solar system back out. There are even signs that it has taken hits on our behalf. While Jupiter may appear to be a big bully today, scientists attribute this to its traumatic childhood.

The largest planet suffered a delayed growth spurt due to its childhood. Most scientists accept the Solar System's beginning as the sun being orbited by a dust-filled gas clamped. These pieces started to glom together into lumps, which then formed larger bodies that grew into the planets of today. However, Jupiter did not have such a serene upbringing as a kid. It was the odd kid out at first, and small clumps fattened the planets up for a million years. After ballooning to a stage where it could beat Earth's mass 20 times over, Jupiter's growth ceased suddenly. Massive worlds smashed into the planet. However, instead of adding mass to Jupiter, they injected energy, creating zones with so much heat and energy that gas molecules struggled to merge with Jupiter. The bombardment continued for another 2 million years and slowed the planet's growth to a snail's pace. Even so, Jupiter grew to 50 times Earth's mass. After that stage, the planet gorged on gas and quickly swelled to its current mass, which is hundreds of times more than Earth's.

The final discovery about Jupiter was an event that scientists assumed was a comet strike on the planet, but it turned out Decimetric radio emissions, which have been traced out to a Taurus-shaped belt around Jupiter's equator, are caused by cyclotronic radiation from electrons that are accelerated in Jupiter's magnetic field. The last one, thermal radiation, is produced by heat in Jupiter's atmosphere. Visualizations of Jupiter using radio telescopes have allowed astronomers to learn much about its atmosphere, thermal properties, and behavior.

In mid-2021, Nessa released a 50-second audio clip at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting. Hold up! What 50-second audio is definitely no joke? Could it be that some aliens are planning to invade Earth? The audio clip was gotten from Juno's Ganymede flyby and was generated from data captured on June 7, 2021, during the spacecraft's closest party act to Ganymede. The sound was similar to that of a robot or a dial-up modem. This discovery joined the list of fascinating discoveries of Jupiter, alongside the presence of water molecules. The audio was captured by Juno's Waves instrument, which was designed to measure radio and plasma waves detected in Jupiter's magnetosphere, the bubble of charged particles that envelop the planet. Commenting on the audio, Scott Bolton said, "The soundtrack is just wild enough to make you feel as if you were riding along as Juno sails pass Ganymede for the first time in more than two decades." Scientists are still studying the wave data collected during the Juno flyby, attempting to decode what frequency changes are present within the recording.

Now, here is a piece of scientific discovery that might shatter everything you thought you knew about Jupiter and even the solar system itself. While you might have seen a million pictures of the solar system showing all the planets orbiting the Sun, and yes, we have mentioned Jupiter orbiting the Sun in this video, technically Jupiter doesn't orbit the Sun. It actually orbits a spot in empty space between it and the Sun called The Barycenter. This is because the Sun doesn't just exert gravity on Jupiter. Jupiter is so big that its own pull affects how the Sun moves too. While the Sun is about one thousand times more massive than Jupiter, the two bodies affect one another proportionally according to distance and mass. This means the amount of Jupiter's pull on the Sun is one thousandth the amount of the Sun's pull on Jupiter. The Sun-Jupiter Barycentre sits 1.07 times the radius of the Sun from the Sun's centre, or seven percent radius of the Sun from the surface. The Sun also orbits this spot. If you were to look at the planetary plane from above, you'd notice a slight wobble as the Sun moves around the Milky Way.

The next discovery involves an incredible similarity between the Earth and Jupiter. Look at the images below. Do you see the eerie similarities between the two? One image was taken on the Earth, while the other was taken on Jupiter, yet they look frighteningly alike. So what is going on here? On the left is a phytoplankton bloom in Earth's Norwegian sea, while on the right, you are looking at turbulent clouds in Jupiter's atmosphere. Here is NASA's explanation: The simplified model of Jupiter's pole shows that geometric patterns of vortices, like those observed on Jupiter, spontaneously emerge and survive forever. This means that the basic geometrical configuration of the planet allows these intriguing structures to form. Although Jupiter's energy system is on a scale much larger than Earth's, understanding the dynamics of the Jovian atmosphere could help us understand the physical mechanisms at play on our own planet. Oceanographers have used Juno's images to study the turbulent atmosphere at Jupiter's poles, helping us understand.

There are two exoplanets of interest in this transcript. The first is hd80606b, which has the most eccentric orbit for any planet. The second is 2m1207b, which orbits the brown dwarf star formal help B.

Scientists are excited about the new James Webb Space Telescope, which is now in action. They hope to discover even more exoplanets with its help. They believe that these discoveries may include more Super Jupiter planets.

The transcript ends with an invitation for readers to share their thoughts on planet Jupiter in the comments section below.