Jupiter's Primordial Past Reveals Interesting Facts About its Mass, Strong Magnetic Field; Was it Twice the Size and 50x the Power? [Find Out]

International Business Times21-05-2025

A new study, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, revealed a very interesting discovery about the planet Jupiter. According to our current models, the Gas Giant has always played a vital role in the evolution of the Solar System. While the scientists were trying to understand how the early Solar System evolved, they conducted a detailed study of Jupiter's primordial state as it will be a steppingstone in the process.
Konstantin Batygin, professor of planetary science at Caltech; and Fred C. Adams, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Michigan; provided a detailed look into Jupiter's primordial state and their calculations revealed that Jupiter was significantly larger and had an even more powerful magnetic field, roughly 3.8 million years after the solar system's first solids formed was dissipating.
Original Size Was Around Twice Its Current Radius
Batygin said, "Our ultimate goal is to understand where we come from, and pinning down the early phases of planet formation is essential to solving the puzzle," adding, "This brings us closer to understanding how not only Jupiter, but the entire solar system took shape."
In order to answer this question, Batygin and Adams looked at Jupiter's small moons, Amalthea and Thebe, which orbit even closer to the planet than Io, the smallest and closest of the four big Galilean moons.
According to Batygin and Adams, Jupiter's original size was around twice its current radius, with a predicted volume equal to more than 2,000 Earths. This was determined by analyzing the modest orbital tilts of Amalthea and Thebe. Additionally, the scientists discovered that Jupiter's magnetic field was almost 50 times stronger back then than it is now.
Highlighting the remarkable imprint the past has left on today's solar system, Adams said, "It's astonishing that even after 4.5 billion years, enough clues remain to let us reconstruct Jupiter's physical state at the dawn of its existence."
Crucially, these discoveries were made possible by independent constraints that circumvent the conventional uncertainties in planetary formation models, which frequently depend on hypotheses on the bulk of the heavy element core, accretion rate, or gas opacity.
Evolution Of Other Stars
Rather, the team concentrated on directly quantifiable quantities, such as the conservation of the planet's angular momentum and the orbital dynamics of Jupiter's moons.
Their research provided a vivid image of Jupiter at the critical juncture when the solar nebula surrounding it evaporated, marking the end of the building blocks needed to make planets and the locking in of the solar system's primordial design.
The findings provided an important new information to the current theories of planet formation, which postulate that core accretion—the rapid accumulation of gas by a rocky and icy core—is how Jupiter and other massive planets surrounding other stars evolved.
Numerous scholars, notably Dave Stevenson of Caltech, the Marvin L. Goldberger Professor of Planetary Science, Emeritus, worked for decades to build these fundamental models. By offering more precise measurements of Jupiter's size, spin rate, and magnetic conditions at an early, crucial moment, this new study expands on that basis.
Although there is still mystery around Jupiter's early history, Batygin noted that the present discovery greatly improves our understanding of the planet's crucial evolutionary phases.
He said, "What we've established here is a valuable benchmark," adding, "A point from which we can more confidently reconstruct the evolution of our solar system."

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Scientists puzzled by giant planet detected orbiting tiny star

CNA

2 days ago

Scientists puzzled by giant planet detected orbiting tiny star

WASHINGTON :Astronomers have spotted a cosmic mismatch that has left them perplexed - a really big planet orbiting a really small star. The discovery defies current understanding of how planets form. The star is only about a fifth the mass of the sun. Stars this size should host small planets akin to Earth and Mars under the leading theories on planetary formation. But the one detected in orbit around this star is much larger - in fact, as big as Saturn, the second-largest planet in our solar system. The star, named TOI-6894, is located roughly 240 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). It is the smallest-known star to host a large planet, about 40 per cent smaller than the two previous record holders. "The question of how such a small star can host such a large planet is one that this discovery raises - and we are yet to answer," said astronomer Edward Bryant of the University of Warwick in England, lead author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Astronomy. Planets beyond our solar system are called exoplanets. The one orbiting TOI-6894 is a gas giant, like Saturn and Jupiter in our solar system, rather than a rocky planet like Earth. The birth of a planetary system begins with a large cloud of gas and dust - called a molecular cloud - that collapses under its own gravity to form a central star. Leftover material spinning around the star in what is called a protoplanetary disk forms planets. Smaller clouds yield smaller stars, and smaller disks contain less material to form planets. "In small clouds of dust and gas, it's hard to build a giant planet," said exoplanet scientist and study co-author Vincent Van Eylen of University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory. "This is because to build a giant planet, you need to quickly build a large planet core and then quickly accrete (accumulate) a lot of gas on top of that core. But there's only so much time to do it before the star starts shining and the disk rapidly disappears. In small stars, we think there's simply not enough mass available to build a giant planet quickly enough before the disk disappears," Van Eylen added. No known planet is larger than its host star, and that is the case here as well, though the two are much closer in size than usual. While the sun's diameter is 10 times larger than our solar system's largest planet Jupiter, TOI-6894's diameter is just 2.5 times greater than its only known planet. The star is a red dwarf, the smallest type of regular star and the most common kind found in the Milky Way galaxy. "Given these stars are very common, there may be many more giant planets in the galaxy than we thought," Bryant said. The star is about 21 per cent the mass of the sun and much dimmer. In fact, the sun is about 250 times more luminous than TOI-6894. "These findings suggest that even the smallest stars in the universe can in some cases form very large planets. That forces us to rethink some of our planet formation models," Van Eylen said. The planet is located about 40 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun, completing an orbit in approximately three days. Its proximity to the star means the planet's surface is quite hot, though not as hot as gas giants called "hot Jupiters" detected orbiting similarly close to bigger stars. Its diameter is slightly larger than Saturn and a bit smaller than Jupiter, though it is less dense than them. Its mass is 56 per cent that of Saturn and 17 per cent that of Jupiter. The main data used in studying the planet came from NASA's orbiting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, and the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large Telescope, or VLT. The researchers hope to better understand the planet's composition with observations planned over the next year using the James Webb Space Telescope. "We expect it to have a massive core surrounded by a gaseous envelope made up of predominantly hydrogen and helium gas," Bryant said.

US Justice Department accuses 2 Chinese researchers of smuggling 'potential agroterrorism weapon', World News

AsiaOne

3 days ago

AsiaOne

US Justice Department accuses 2 Chinese researchers of smuggling 'potential agroterrorism weapon', World News

WASHINGTON - US federal prosecutors have accused two Chinese nationals of smuggling a dangerous biological pathogen that had the potential to be used as an agricultural terrorism weapon into the United States for research. The US Department of Justice on Tuesday (June 3) identified the pathogen as Fusarium graminearum, a fungus it said was classified in scientific literature as a potential agroterrorism weapon. In a statement it said that the fungus causes "head blight" in some crops and is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses globally each year. According to an FBI criminal complaint, Zunyong Liu, 34, a researcher currently in China, brought the fungus into the United States while visiting his girlfriend, Yunqing Jian, 33, in July 2024. He admitted to smuggling in the fungus so he could conduct research on it at a University of Michigan laboratory where his girlfriend worked, according to the complaint. The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to the complaint, an examination of electronic communications between the two indicated that they discussed shipping biological materials and research being done in the laboratory prior to Liu's arrival. Jian and Liu were accused in the complaint of conspiracy, smuggling goods into the United States, false statements and visa fraud. Cheyvoryea Gibson, special agent in charge of the FBI Detroit Field Office, said the pair's actions "posed an imminent threat to public safety." Jian was expected to appear in court in Detroit, Michigan, on Tuesday. A judge appointed a public defender, who could not be immediately reached for comment, to represent Jian. [[nid:718241]]