“An international team of astronomers has found that Jupiter’s ash shell has no homogeneous scattering. In the inner part there are more metals than in the outer parts, and they amount to 11 to 30 Earth masses and make up 3-9% of Jupiter’s total mass. Swallowed “at the time of its formation
An international team of astronomers has found that Jupiter’s ash shell has no homogeneous scattering. The inner part has more metals than the outer parts, and they amount to 11 to 30 Earth masses and make up 3-9% of Jupiter’s total mass. This is metallic enough to conclude that bodies One kilometer in size – tiny celestial bodies – must have played a role in the formation of Jupiter, led by Yamila Miguel (SRON / Leiden Observatory) and published on June 8, 2022 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Jupiter, a gaseous giant, is the fifth planet from the Sun, orbiting it between Mars and Saturn. It is the largest and most massive planet in the gap in our solar system, with a mass more than 137 times the mass of the earth.
When NASA’s Juno space mission arrived in Jupiter in 2016, we got a glimpse of the impressive beauty of the largest planet in our solar system. The star’s shell beneath the thin visible layer, however, is not immediately visible. Yet Juno can accurately describe an image by sensing the gravitational pull over various places. This gives astronomers information about the inner composition, which is not like what we see. on the surface.
An international team of astronomers led by Yamila Miguel has now found that the ash envelope is not a homogeneous mixture as previously thought. It has a higher concentration of “metals” – elements heavier than hydrogen and helium – toward the center of the planet. That meet the observational limitations measured by Juno.
Miguel: “There are two mechanisms by which a gaseous giant like Jupiter obtains metals during its formation: through the accumulation of small fragments or larger tiny celestial bodies. We know that when a baby star is large enough, it begins to push out small fragments. The richness of metals within Jupiter we see “Now it’s impossible to get ahead of it. So the scenario can be dismissed with only small fragments as solids at the time of Jupiter’s formation. Tiny celestial bodies are too large to be blocked, so they inevitably played a role.”
The finding that the inside of the shell has heavier elements than the outside means that the lush is gradually outward, rather than being a homogeneous mixture throughout the shell. “At first we thought there was justifiable heat transfer, like in boiling water, that causes it to be completely mixed,” Miguel says. “But our findings show otherwise.”
To the scientific paper