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Jupiter's Great Dark Spot
Edball writes "For more than a century astronomers thought that the Great Red Spot was the biggest thing on Jupiter. Not anymore. Images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have revealed something at least as large,
The Great Dark Spot."
In related solar system news, pajamacore writes "Space.com reports that the first extrasolar planet to have its atmosphere detected is having its gas envelope boiled off by heat and blown away by tidal forces. At present, the planet is 70% the size of Jupiter but its orbit is closer to its parent star than Mercury's is to our own Sun. It should be a treat to eventually see the planet's core and maybe it'll clue us in a bit to gas giant formation."
Maybe it's just me, but the dark spot in the center of the animation looks very artificial. It's clearly six-sided until the very end of the animation. Maybe the poor astronomer was bored and just wanted to have some material published for a change, you know, have his fifteen minutes of fame. Or it's the aliens. Always the aliens, dammit.
Jupiter's probably very sensitive about it.
They didn't happen to take a close up of it and discover a cloud of spinning blocks, size 1kmx4kmx9km, did they?
When will astronomers find Jupiter's G-spot?
Not bad for something that cost 15% of the Federal Foodstamp budget in FY2001.
Or only three days (<1%) of the current USA defense budget...
That is assuming the folks at Lockhead and Boeing can stick to metric.
Man, if I screw up a client's computer, I don't get hired back. Hell, they will usually go so far as to tell their friends and peers not to use me.
If you are a miliary^H^H^H^H^H^Haerospace contractor and you screw something up you get bonuses and additional contracts.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
when have astronomers *ever* found a G-spot?
;)
I kid, I kid
Yeah right. Learn some basic astronomy. Underneath the outer atmosphere is liquid metallic hydrogen. What does that mean? There is no true surface, and disturbance would quickly be smoothed over. Yes, many have theorized that there may be a small rocky core underneath it all, but it is insignificant compared to the the rest. I seriously doubt there'd be any surface features there, and even if there was, why would it reflect itself through such a dynamic atmosphere? I think not.
No the orbit would not get bigger and bigger. What force would act upon it? Another object with MORE gravitational force than the planets star would be needed. Mass being stripped off would affect the core though. It is often theorized that Jupiter has a rocky core 8 times the mass of the Earth, yet because of the emense pressure of the surrounding gases it is compresses it to a diameter of 11,000 KM, just smaller than the 12,800 KM diameter of the Earth. The estimated atmospheric pressure is near 70 million atmospheres with a tempature near 22,000 Kelvin. So as the gas is drawn away from the core it would expand and cool (because of a decreased Kelvin-Helmholtz effect). The heavy core would actualy look larger than it was in it's compressed form. This of course would take many many millions of years. I would specualte by that time we'd have discoverd other planets past that particular stage of life. I think a more interesting question would be as to WHY the atmosphere is being yanked by the star? It was thought that Jovian panets would only form at sufficient distances from a stars gravitaional force, otherwise all that Hydrogen and Helium would have been captured by the sun leaving a terrestial planet with a thinner atmosphere if any at all. Has the star expanded to a larger size or has the planet changed orbit? Another interesting factoid about Jupiter. The "Great Red Spot" was first detected in 1664 by Robert Hooke. Other similar but smaller and much more temporary storms are commonly seen. ~Z
Don't forget there are two other moons have been known to have similar subterranean worlds. Very strong evidence has been discovered to support the idea of subterranean oceans beneath the surfaces of two other Galilean moons, Ganymede and Callisto. While these would be colder, there is also far less radiation to wory about. With some luck, any of these three worlds may well host life, weither microbial or maybe something more complex.
Cassini is the last of the "billion dollar probes". Others in the series included Terra, Galileo, Magellan and Mars Observer. These probles are a legacy of the 80s. It was the astronomical cost of these probes that made NASA launch the "faster/better/cheaper" programs.
Cassini predates F/B/C and is the end of an era. We won't see the likes of Cassini again in our life times.
It's difficult to say which is better, a lot of F/B/C probes (think plastic disposable watches), or a single billion $ probe (think Rolex: takes a licking and keeps on ticking). I think there's room for both types.
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The piddling money we use on space exploration cannot even begin to solve the world's hunger problem. However, there's the odd chance the said space exploration will sometime in the future solve the world hunger problem (from results in zero-gravity growth experiments to terraforming). That slim chance is certainly better than that offered by e.g. our military. I doubt its enormous budget will in any way affect world hunger except negatively.
Okay, so mod me down for offtopic, but one thing that has always bothered me is, why don't people seriously (i.e. besides science fiction) consider the possibility of life of some form inside a gas giant? Sure, there is no liquid water, hence probably no "life as we know it", but if there are other forms of life as we don't (yet) know it, wouldn't this be an even greater discovery?
What is needed for life (of any reasonable definition) to evolve in an environment, is that arbitrarily complex structures can form in such an environment. Basically, the environment must be "interesting". Nothing ever happens on the surface of our moon, so we don't expect life to evolve there. On the other hand, all kinds of cool chemical reactions can occur in liquid water - as has happened here on Earth. But what about Jupiter's atmosphere? There certainly are interesting molecules floating about - in fact the "Great Dark Spot" is conjectured to be a cloud of hydrocarbon droplets. There is plenty of energy - kinetic (storms), electric, magnetic, some solar as well as plenty of radioactivity. What's more, the environment is HUGE. You have all ranges of pressure from near-vacuum to something ridiculously dense in the core, and everything in between. Is it possible for some region inside Jupiter to have what it takes for life to evolve? And, since there are other sources of energy besides solar, this might happen in the dark depth, where we will never find it. Maybe there's a whole civilization deep in there that we're not aware of.
Does this remind anybody else of the Slylandros in StarControl 2?
"...Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Either Cassini is really expensive for an unmanned research probe or poor people are being neglected. I mean, space exploration is great, but so is making sure that everyone has food to eat.
Look, we have enough money and food to feed everyone on the planet decently, we just don't choose to, or our governments don't choose to, or someboday somewhere has decided that we aren't going to...
The money spent on the space program is a drop in the ocean, and has absolutely nothing to do with the fact there are still people starving to death in the 3rd world. If we aren't going to spend it on feeding people anyway (and lets face it, we aren't) better to spend it doing something to advance science and human knowledge than buying another couple of B-1B bombers, surely?
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
The government has more jobs than just protecting us. Even so, "protection" is a very vague concept that entails more than just having a strong military. We the people are one in the same as the country, and so to protect us, the country must be protected as well. We don't need to just be protected from invading armies. We need to be protected from falling behind in the world as well, and that means more than just the military. In order to ensure a future for our nation (which is really why you're protecting it in the first place), you must have a basic framework within which people can live. Our people need to be educated in order to remain competitive in this global economy, therefore the government's job is also to provide basic education to its citizens. We need businesses to make and sell products that let us live our daily lives, and we need to be protected in case they grow too big. Therefore the government's job is also to create an economic infrastructure (the treasury and the mint), transportation (so that people have the freedom to travel and goods can get to where they need to be), telecommunications (or at least regulation thereof, so that people have the freedom to communicate with other people, and businesses can get their jobs done), welfare (because a temporarily unemployed person with no income cannot afford to pay bills, and therefore puts no money back into the economy, which does nothing for our nation. after a certain point, they become a drain on the economy, but welfare can be good when done properly), and taxation (because providing all of these services costs money).