Jupiter Rules the Solar System

  Hey, space buffs, just how well do you know our solar system? Can you guess the planet? It's more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. It's covered with striking swirls and stripes, which are windy clouds of cold ammonia and water floating in an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. Still no clue? Then look at this: the infamous Great Red Spot, a giant storm larger than our home planet that has been raging for hundreds of years. Right now, this cloudy world is Jupiter, and the main question is: is this planet our enemy or friend NASA's Juno Orbiter is exploring this gas giant at the moment, sending us tons of useful data.

Jupiter is so big that 11 piles of earth could fit across its equator. If our planet were the size of a grape, Jupiter would be a basketball The gas giant is the fifth planet from the sun, orbiting around 484 million miles away, and even though for us Earthlings our blue-green world seems to be the most important among all the other planets, we live in Jupiter's solar system after all; it accounts for 75 percent of the mass of all the planets in our star system, and it's also 318 times more massive than Earth. Whatever Jupiter wants, Jupiter gets Jupiter wants to throw stuff across the solar system with no problem; after all, this gas giant doesn't have its immense gravity for anything. Yank's material from the asteroid belt is stopping poor space rocks from forming anything larger than Siri, the only dwarf planet located in the inner solar system Jupiter is hungry; it gobbles up comets.

Asteroids and whatnot Jupiter's bored; it hurdles everything it manages to capture on wayward trajectories This gas giant must have caused a lot of destruction throughout its life, which is around 4.5 billion years, but here's the thing: some scientists think that we might owe our very existence and the existence of our planet to Jupiter's protective gravity may sound confusing but by greedily swallowing up dangerous space objects this planet vacuums the solar system other astronomers don't agree with this Theory they claim Jupiter is a hooligan bothering peaceful and safe comets and sending them to unexpected places you see some of the most dangerous objects in our solar system are long-period comets those are huge chunks of ice and rock coming from the depths of the Oort cloud which lies far beyond Pluto some of them get pushed into the inner solar system where they Dash past the sun there's a chance that the most devastating Extinction on Earth was caused by a long period comet as such comets make their way through the solar system they likely interact with Jupiter's gravity the gas giant pushes them this way and that consuming some of them like delicious ice rock Burgers But does Jupiter push such comets out of their dangerous orbit so that they don't smash into Earth, or does this gas giant divert the trajectories of the comets that would otherwise Miss Earth, no one knows astronomers sometimes call Jupiter a failed star.

The gas giant indeed contains a lot of helium and hydrogen, the materials stars are mostly made of, but the planet's mass isn't enough to start a fusion reaction in its core. That's exactly how stars produce energy; they fuse the atoms of hydrogen under extreme pressure and heat and create helium in the process. In the process, they also release light and heat Jupiter could start a nuclear reaction and become a star only if it were 75 times its current mass. Paradoxically, if Jupiter even got more massive, it would also get smaller. This additional mass would make the planet denser, and it would cause the gas giant to start pulling it in on itself Astronomers are almost sure that even if Jupiter were four times its current mass, it would remain the same size Jupiter has between 80 and 95 moons, but one of the most popular ones these days is Europa imagine a still frozen world it's ancient about 4.5 billion years old it's barely heated by the Rays of the Sun and covered with a thick layer of ice this world is smaller than our moon but a bit larger than Pluto that's what Europa the sixth satellite of Jupiter and one of the biggest moons in the solar system looks like the coolest thing about this faraway place it might host life astronomers consider Europa to be one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for new forms of life all because this Moon has a huge saltwater ocean with a depth of 40 to 100 miles yes it is hidden under a layer of ice that is estimated to be from 10 to 20 miles thick but it's still potentially habitable Astronomers claim that plumes of water erupt from cracks in the ice shell and release the contents of the moon's ocean into space for a long time Scientists have been wondering about Jupiter's x-ray auroras and what causes them It seems like the 40 year-old mystery has been solved Jupiter's breathtaking x-ray auroral emissions are triggered by electrically charged particles called ions that crash into the gas giant's atmosphere, and here's the result, but astronomers couldn't understand how those ions got to the atmosphere in the first place Recently, they've seen the ions surfing Jupiter's magnetic field down to the planet's atmosphere. Astronomers have received this data thanks to NASA's Juno spacecraft and ESA's MXM Newton telescope situated in Earth's orbit.

On our home planet, auroras are only visible in a belt surrounding the magnetic poles between 65 and 80 degrees latitude. Anything beyond 80 degrees and auroras disappears, but Jupiter's x-ray auroras are much more inconsistent; they pulsate regularly, pull the main belt, and sometimes they're different at the North and South Poles. Scientists have figured out that this pulsation is caused by fluctuations in Jupiter's magnetic field. You see, when the planet rotates, it drags behind its magnetic field, is struck by the particles of the solar wind, and gets compressed. This heats the particles trapped in Jupiter's magnetic field, producing magnificent auroras Another feature Jupiter is famous for is its great red spot, an enormous storm raging in the southern hemisphere of the gas giant. Its top parts tower is more than five miles above the surrounding cloud tops. The storm is more than twice as wide as our planet. At the edges of the storm, the wind speeds reach 270 to 420 miles per hour, which is faster than Earth's tornadoes.

The hot gases in the planet's atmosphere are always moving Rising to fall and swirling, just like on our planet, when cooler and hotter gases mix and merge into one another, they form giant circling storms Astronomers think that once several enormous storms could have come together, creating the Great Red Spot, and now it keeps raging by constantly drawing cool gases from below and hot gases from above, plus this monster of a storm absorbs other smaller vortices, making the spot even more powerful Several theories try to explain why the storm has its trademark color, which varies from whitish and pale salmon to orange and brick red. Some scientists believe the answer lies below the Great Red Spot, closer to the planet's surface, where a colorless layer of ammonium hydrosulfide might be reacting with cosmic rays or the UV radiation coming from the Sun.

This somehow gives the spot its pretty red color, but so far it's just a theory. Astronomers have been observing the Great Red Spot since the 1830s For the First Time, The Storm was spotted in 1665 and described as a permanent spot; in other words, the storm is almost 400 years old. Strangely, it's been shrinking in size since the beginning of the 21st century. In 2019, it began flaking at the edges with small pieces breaking off and vanishing. If this process continues by 2040, the Great Red Spot might become circular or it may simply disappear. That's it for today, so hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends. If you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.