So we're a couple years off!
Posted on 04/05/2012 2:15:27 AM PDT by U-238
Jupiter might be having a change of heart. Literally.
New simulations suggest that Jupiter's rocky core has been liquefying, melting, and mixing with the rest of the planet's innards. With this new data, astronomers hope to better explain a recent puzzling discovery of a strange planet outside of our solar system.
"It's a really important piece of the puzzle of trying to figure out what's going on inside giant planets," said Jonathan Fortney, a planetary scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz who was not affiliated with the research.
Conventional planetary formation theory has modeled Jupiter as a set of neat layers with a gassy outer envelope surrounding a rocky core consisting of heavier elements. But increasing evidence has indicated that the insides of gas giants like Jupiter are a messy mixture of elements without strictly defined borders.
This new research on a melting Jovian core bolsters a mixing model of gas giant planets and would provide another avenue for heavier elements to flow throughout the planet.
"People have been working on the assumption that these planets are layered because it's easier to work on this assumption," said Hugh Wilson, a planetary scientist at the University of California Berkeley and a coauthor of the new research appearing in Physical Review Letters.
Although scientists had previously toyed with the idea of melting cores in large planets, nobody sat down and did the necessary calculations, said Wilson.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Sounds like you might be onto something that would interest the Depart of Energy. Maybe we could go into business together and suck up a half billion dollars.... We could call it Solyndra II, unlelss you think that might be too obvious.
TRANSLATION: We ain't got a clue!
Prayers for the Jovians.
Since it is made up entirely of gas, the planet would be gone if you did that. So much for saving Jupiter. :)
So we're a couple years off!
LOLOLOL!
There are no Jovians....only Europans.
Isaac said so.
:)
Scientists’ brains are melting, I say.
Actually, it was Ryan's Budget.
This article is just sublime
Send them wind generators and Chevy Volts immediately.
It depends on your deposition
indeed.
IN HOT!
But I wouldn't say melting, as much as melted. Jupiter has been orbiting the Sun, like any other planet, since the Solar system was formed some 5 billion years ago. I doubt that it's wasting away.
Another thing to think about is that Jupiter, due to its massive size and gravity well, is a magnet and vacuum for all kinds of space debris such as asteroids and comets, and is in such a position to literally shield the Earth from most life-itself-threatening bodies from striking us.
I personally see God's grandeur in such an elegant system, even though I am allowing for the Earth to be far, far older than many fundamentalists say.
In any case, scientists believe the planets were formed by aggregating smaller bodies into the gravity wells they become as they get larger. This is actually a logical conclusion. A giant body like Jupiter just might be still growing larger because of this. Any melting at the core and subsequent out-gassing into space is probably offset by this continuous aggregation.
A brilliant God! We are made in His image, which includes His intellect, and He wants us to know His Universe, and discover the secrets thereof.
Don't let the atheists scare you away from science!
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
Earth to Jupiter....Earth to Jupiter....buy more hybrids....over.
I have the perfect solution.
Let’s send Al Gore to Jupiter.
What’s the big deal about this.
Earth is molten 20 to 50 mi beneath it’s crust. That’s less than 1% of it’s diameter. Other than a few earth quakes it’s doesn’t affect us much. I would think molten cores would be common on larger planets.
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