Jupiter's Bolts Of Lightning Are Similar To Earth's, (Only Longer)

Voyager 1's discovery of lightning on Jupiter was made decades ago, yet little is still known about it. The Juno mission's enhanced temporal resolution, however, has been utilized in a research published in Nature Communications to examine the processes underlying Jupiter's electric discharges and contrast them with those on Earth.

Though clouds of water and ice are believed to still develop at temperatures just a bit below freezing, Jupiter's atmosphere is assumed to be mostly composed of hydrogen and helium rather than the nitrogen, oxygen, and water vapor that make up Earth's atmosphere. Charge separation inside the clouds is caused by convective motion, which is propelled by heat from deeper inside Jupiter and results in strong electric fields. Lightning may leap between them when the fields disintegrate, just like on Earth, albeit on Jupiter this often occurs at the poles rather than in the middle as we are accustomed to.

Radio frequency signals were picked up by the Galileo spacecraft as it began its last fall towards Jupiter, but further examination revealed they were originating from a great distance away. Galileo had entered a calm, dry region of Jupiter's atmosphere where there were no close thunderstorms. Galileo may have been able to continue sending signals from a deeper part of Jupiter's atmosphere than if it had been struck by lightning, but this position limited our ability to understand these occurrences.

Instead of depending on reaching the proper location in a last blaze of glory, Juno can continuously monitor radio signals from the planet's lightning by swooping to only a few thousand kilometers above Jupiter's cloud tops.

The radio pulses created by electricity in Jupiter's atmosphere can be measured by Juno with an eighth of a millisecond of resolution. According to the article, such pulses often occurs one millisecond apart. The findings, according to the scientists, "Suggest step-like extensions of lightning channels and indicate that Jovian lightning initiation processes are similar to the initiation of intracloud lightning at Earth."

Jovinian lightning follows a pattern similar to that of the Earth's atmosphere in terms of timing and interstices, with radio signals occurring milliseconds apart from stepping processes in which leaders jerkily move across the sky.

The authors contend that certain apparent similarities are deceptive. While close-to-ground lightning strikes on Earth typically consist of three to six strokes, Jupiter's radio pulses mostly arrived in groups of five, but this does not imply that the process is the same. "Multi-stroke lightning bursts were extremely unlikely to have produced the Jovian pulse groupings. In such a scenario, the Jovian strokes would manifest around 30 times more quickly than on Earth, according to the authors. This is deemed "improbable" by them.

Everything on Jupiter is said to function on a different scale, including the huge bolts fit for a deity. On the one hand, the authors draw the conclusion that lightning moves at a similar pace inside clouds on Jupiter and Earth. The lightning pathways, on the other hand, are thought to be between a few hundred and a few thousand meters long. Although there have been lightning megaflashes on Earth that were hundreds of kilometers long, the most of them were smaller than those on the world of the sky god.

In 2020, two "megaflash" lightning incidents were recorded from space, with a lightning flash distance of 768 kilometers (477 miles) and a length of 17.01 seconds. Such astounding heights for lightning world records necessitate spectacular storms comprised of a vast field of electrified clouds. When these circumstances mix with tiny discharges, lightning bolts may cover incredible distances — in this case, between Texas and Mississippi. Published in Nature Communications is the study.