Latest news with #GreatRedSpot
The Advertiser
4 days ago
- Science
- The Advertiser
Ask Fuzzy: What's happening to Jupiter's spot?
While there are many truly beautiful objects in the night sky, arguably the most stunning is Jupiter. Seen up close from spacecraft such as Cassini, the swirling textured surface looks like something that Van Gogh might have painted. The fifth planet from the Sun is easily visible to the naked eye and is more than twice as massive as the other planets combined. If it were a hollow shell, a thousand Earths could fit inside. Curiously for such a large object, Jupiter also has the shortest day in the solar system, being only 10 hours long. Jupiter's size and rapid spin generates a huge coriolis effect - the same force that shapes cyclones and hurricanes on Earth. The striking colours in thick bands across Jupiter are thought to be plumes of sulphur and phosphorus gases. While it might be beautiful, it would not be a happy place to visit. Aside from being a long way, the atmosphere that includes ammonia ice and ammonium hydrosulfide crystals is not recommended. The planet's rotation causes cyclonic storms with winds over 500 kilometres per hour, forming bands of colour, with spots scattered from pole to pole. With no solid surface to slow them down, these spots persist for many years. The first person to observe a spot on Jupiter was Giovanni Cassini in 1672 when he drew pictures using his primitive telescope. By today's standards telescopes were still unsophisticated in the 1800s when the Great Red Spot was first seen. A drawing from 1831 shows a large oval shape that we now know is a giant storm, twice as wide as Earth. MORE ASK FUZZY: Through the 300 years it's been observed, Jupiter's patterns have been constantly evolving. In recent times, three smaller ovals merged to form the Little Red Spot which is about half the size. Now it seems the Great Red Spot is shrinking. In the late 1800s it spanned about 41,000km and in 1979 the NASA Voyager measured it at 23,335 km. Today, the spot's waistline is only 16,500 km, and getting smaller by 1000 kilometres per year. At this rate it could disappear in the near future. It might be sad for our photogenic neighbour to lose its beauty spot, but who knows, it'll probably grow a new one. The Fuzzy Logic Science Show is at 11am Sundays on 2xx 98.3FM. Send your questions to AskFuzzy@ Podcast: While there are many truly beautiful objects in the night sky, arguably the most stunning is Jupiter. Seen up close from spacecraft such as Cassini, the swirling textured surface looks like something that Van Gogh might have painted. The fifth planet from the Sun is easily visible to the naked eye and is more than twice as massive as the other planets combined. If it were a hollow shell, a thousand Earths could fit inside. Curiously for such a large object, Jupiter also has the shortest day in the solar system, being only 10 hours long. Jupiter's size and rapid spin generates a huge coriolis effect - the same force that shapes cyclones and hurricanes on Earth. The striking colours in thick bands across Jupiter are thought to be plumes of sulphur and phosphorus gases. While it might be beautiful, it would not be a happy place to visit. Aside from being a long way, the atmosphere that includes ammonia ice and ammonium hydrosulfide crystals is not recommended. The planet's rotation causes cyclonic storms with winds over 500 kilometres per hour, forming bands of colour, with spots scattered from pole to pole. With no solid surface to slow them down, these spots persist for many years. The first person to observe a spot on Jupiter was Giovanni Cassini in 1672 when he drew pictures using his primitive telescope. By today's standards telescopes were still unsophisticated in the 1800s when the Great Red Spot was first seen. A drawing from 1831 shows a large oval shape that we now know is a giant storm, twice as wide as Earth. MORE ASK FUZZY: Through the 300 years it's been observed, Jupiter's patterns have been constantly evolving. In recent times, three smaller ovals merged to form the Little Red Spot which is about half the size. Now it seems the Great Red Spot is shrinking. In the late 1800s it spanned about 41,000km and in 1979 the NASA Voyager measured it at 23,335 km. Today, the spot's waistline is only 16,500 km, and getting smaller by 1000 kilometres per year. At this rate it could disappear in the near future. It might be sad for our photogenic neighbour to lose its beauty spot, but who knows, it'll probably grow a new one. The Fuzzy Logic Science Show is at 11am Sundays on 2xx 98.3FM. Send your questions to AskFuzzy@ Podcast: While there are many truly beautiful objects in the night sky, arguably the most stunning is Jupiter. Seen up close from spacecraft such as Cassini, the swirling textured surface looks like something that Van Gogh might have painted. The fifth planet from the Sun is easily visible to the naked eye and is more than twice as massive as the other planets combined. If it were a hollow shell, a thousand Earths could fit inside. Curiously for such a large object, Jupiter also has the shortest day in the solar system, being only 10 hours long. Jupiter's size and rapid spin generates a huge coriolis effect - the same force that shapes cyclones and hurricanes on Earth. The striking colours in thick bands across Jupiter are thought to be plumes of sulphur and phosphorus gases. While it might be beautiful, it would not be a happy place to visit. Aside from being a long way, the atmosphere that includes ammonia ice and ammonium hydrosulfide crystals is not recommended. The planet's rotation causes cyclonic storms with winds over 500 kilometres per hour, forming bands of colour, with spots scattered from pole to pole. With no solid surface to slow them down, these spots persist for many years. The first person to observe a spot on Jupiter was Giovanni Cassini in 1672 when he drew pictures using his primitive telescope. By today's standards telescopes were still unsophisticated in the 1800s when the Great Red Spot was first seen. A drawing from 1831 shows a large oval shape that we now know is a giant storm, twice as wide as Earth. MORE ASK FUZZY: Through the 300 years it's been observed, Jupiter's patterns have been constantly evolving. In recent times, three smaller ovals merged to form the Little Red Spot which is about half the size. Now it seems the Great Red Spot is shrinking. In the late 1800s it spanned about 41,000km and in 1979 the NASA Voyager measured it at 23,335 km. Today, the spot's waistline is only 16,500 km, and getting smaller by 1000 kilometres per year. At this rate it could disappear in the near future. It might be sad for our photogenic neighbour to lose its beauty spot, but who knows, it'll probably grow a new one. The Fuzzy Logic Science Show is at 11am Sundays on 2xx 98.3FM. Send your questions to AskFuzzy@ Podcast: While there are many truly beautiful objects in the night sky, arguably the most stunning is Jupiter. Seen up close from spacecraft such as Cassini, the swirling textured surface looks like something that Van Gogh might have painted. The fifth planet from the Sun is easily visible to the naked eye and is more than twice as massive as the other planets combined. If it were a hollow shell, a thousand Earths could fit inside. Curiously for such a large object, Jupiter also has the shortest day in the solar system, being only 10 hours long. Jupiter's size and rapid spin generates a huge coriolis effect - the same force that shapes cyclones and hurricanes on Earth. The striking colours in thick bands across Jupiter are thought to be plumes of sulphur and phosphorus gases. While it might be beautiful, it would not be a happy place to visit. Aside from being a long way, the atmosphere that includes ammonia ice and ammonium hydrosulfide crystals is not recommended. The planet's rotation causes cyclonic storms with winds over 500 kilometres per hour, forming bands of colour, with spots scattered from pole to pole. With no solid surface to slow them down, these spots persist for many years. The first person to observe a spot on Jupiter was Giovanni Cassini in 1672 when he drew pictures using his primitive telescope. By today's standards telescopes were still unsophisticated in the 1800s when the Great Red Spot was first seen. A drawing from 1831 shows a large oval shape that we now know is a giant storm, twice as wide as Earth. MORE ASK FUZZY: Through the 300 years it's been observed, Jupiter's patterns have been constantly evolving. In recent times, three smaller ovals merged to form the Little Red Spot which is about half the size. Now it seems the Great Red Spot is shrinking. In the late 1800s it spanned about 41,000km and in 1979 the NASA Voyager measured it at 23,335 km. Today, the spot's waistline is only 16,500 km, and getting smaller by 1000 kilometres per year. At this rate it could disappear in the near future. It might be sad for our photogenic neighbour to lose its beauty spot, but who knows, it'll probably grow a new one. The Fuzzy Logic Science Show is at 11am Sundays on 2xx 98.3FM. Send your questions to AskFuzzy@ Podcast:
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Jupiter is shrinking and used to be twice as big, mind-boggling study reveals
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet, used to be even bigger, according to a new study. The cloud of gas and dust from which the sun and planets formed dissipated around 4.5 billion years ago. At that time, Jupiter was at least twice its current size, and its magnetic field was about 50 times stronger, researchers found. The findings, which the team described in a study published May 20 in the journal Nature Astronomy, could help scientists develop a clearer picture of the early solar system. "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," study co-author Konstantin Batygin, a planetary scientist at Caltech, said in a statement. "This brings us closer to understanding how not only Jupiter but the entire solar system took shape." Jupiter's immense gravity — along with the sun's — helped fashion the solar system, shaping the orbits of other planets and rocky bodies. But how the giant planet itself formed remains opaque. To gain a better picture of Jupiter's early days, the researchers studied the present-day, slightly tilted orbits of two of Jupiter's moons, Amalthea and Thebe. The paths these moons chart are similar to what they were when they first formed, but the moons have been pulled slightly over time by their larger, volcanically active neighbor Io. By analyzing the discrepancies between the actual changes and those expected from Io's nudges, the researchers could work out Jupiter's original size. Related: 'This has left us scratching our heads': Astronomers stumped by James Webb telescope's latest views of Jupiter When the solar nebula dissipated, marking the end of planet formation, Jupiter's radius would have been between two and 2.5 times its current size to give Amalthea and Thebe their current orbits, the scientists calculated. Over time, the planet has shrunk to its current size as its surface cools. Then, the team used the radius to calculate the strength of the planet's magnetic field, which would have been around 21 milliteslas — about 50 times stronger than its current value and 400 times stronger than Earth's. "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," study co-author Fred Adams, an astrophysicist at the University of Michigan, said in the statement. RELATED STORIES —Cloudy with a chance of mushballs: Jupiter's monster storms include softball size hailstones made of ammonia —'This has left us scratching our heads': Astronomers stumped by James Webb telescope's latest views of Jupiter —Is Jupiter's Great Red Spot an impostor? Giant storm may not be the original one discovered 350 years ago The findings sharpen researchers' view of the solar system at a critical transition point in its history. The calculations also don't depend on how Jupiter formed — a process that's still not understood in detail — relying instead on directly observable quantities. "What we've established here is a valuable benchmark," Batygin said in the statement. "A point from which we can more confidently reconstruct the evolution of our solar system." Jupiter is currently shrinking by about 2 centimeters per year, according to Caltech. This is due to the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism — a process by which planets grow smaller as they cool. As Jupiter slowly cools, its internal pressure drops, causing the planet to steadily shrink. It's unclear when this process began.
Buzz Feed
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
My Entire Perspective On The World Was Just Turned Completely Upside Down After Seeing These 25 Absolutely Mind-Blowing Photos
1. 34 years old looks very different on some people: 2. Here's how big the propellers of a modern cruise ship are compared to a person: 3. Queen Elizabeth's dollhouse was as big as, well, you know, a house: She was gifted it in 1933 by the fine people of Wales. It's also still around today. 4. This is what a 20 year old Dolly Parton looked like: Working 9-5, since 1966. 5. This is one of the last pictures of the Titanic ever taken: 6. The extra large size of mayonnaise in some European countries is known as "AMERICAN SIZE:" 7. That's not a tiny strand of hair, it's actually an extremely small drill bit used for constructing models: So, yes. It is a drill bit for ANTS. 8. This is what gummy bears in South Korea look like compared to gummy bears in the United States: 9. This is what the skeleton of a python looks like: 10. This is how much oil one tiny piece of corn chip produces: 11. Hospitals have vein-finders that allow you to shine a line on your body and reveal where your, well, veins are: I could be entertained with this for hours. 12. This is the world's tallest yew hedge, planted in the 1700s and standing over 45 feet tall: Imagine trimming that there hedge. It would be electric. 13. This is how big ostrich eggs are: 14. This is what the Himalayan mountain range looks like from space: 15. This is what a $10 coin looks like: 16. Corner garages not only exist, but also look kinda cool: Nature is beautiful. 17. Vintage cough syrups used to have some... interesting ingredients: 18. People leave cymbals and drumsticks at the grave of former Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham: Like he's an ancient pharoah. 19. Asphalt, folks... it gets really hot: 20. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is shrinking: NASA According the NASA, "Some unknown activity in the planet's atmosphere may be draining energy and weakening the storm, causing it to shrink." 22. These big fellahs are Hercules beetles, one of the largest types of beetle in the world. They can also fly! Now time to relax. 23. This is what it looks like when a ferris wheel gets deconstructed and taken apart: More like a Ferris WEDGE. 24. Allen keys can be absolutely gigantic: u/subliminalimage / Via Would love to see this bad boy next to that gigantic hedge. 25. And, finally, rolls of toilet paper can be absolutely, astoundingly gigantic: It's... tremendous.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Major storms on Jupiter can leave a fingerprint in the planet's atmosphere
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. It would appear that a really big storm on Jupiter can leave a noticeable mark in the planet's atmosphere. A recent study tapped into data collected by the Jupiter-orbiting spacecraft Juno and the Hubble Space Telescope to start piecing together how this gas giant's storms churn up the world's atmosphere — even surprisingly far below the clouds. This churning involves the storms dredging up ammonia in some places and hurling it far into the Jovian depths as slushy hailstones in others. The result, it appears, is that patches of ammonia gas end up buried deep in some parts of Jupiter's lower atmosphere, while other areas have far less ammonia than they normally would. In other words, some storms on Jupiter can leave behind a fingerprint, reworking the whole chemical makeup of the planet's atmosphere. A huge storm on Jupiter broke out in December of 2016, just south of the planet's equator and about 60 degrees east of the famous Great Red Spot. Amateur astronomer Phil Miles was the first to spot this storm in February of 2017 — and the timing couldn't have been better. Juno was about to make its fourth close flyby of Jupiter, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array here on Earth, along with the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit, were also pointed at the gas giant. This meant astronomers could see Jupiter in different wavelengths of light at the same time. Armed with data from three observatories, University of California, Berkeley, planetary scientist Chris Moeckel and his colleagues just needed to figure out what kinds of updrafts, downdrafts and heat transfer could best explain what Juno, Hubble and ALMA saw during and after the storm. The team simulated the inner workings of Jupiter's atmosphere, which revealed that the massive storm had stirred up the planet's atmosphere dozens of miles below even the lowest-hanging cloud decks. To understand exactly what that means, we first need to understand one of the quirks of describing the weather on Jupiter. It's hard to measure altitudes in Jupiter's atmosphere, because the planet doesn't have a surface in the usual sense (there's liquid somewhere below all those deep layers of gas, but it's never been directly measured), so scientists rely on pressure instead. There's a level in Jupiter's middle stratosphere at which the atmospheric pressure is about the same as it is at sea level here on Earth, and that makes a useful baseline for saying how deep things are in Jupiter's atmosphere. The dense, heavy water vapor clouds where huge Jovian storms begin are about 82 miles (132 kilometers) below that level, where the air pressure is about 10 times higher than it is at sea level on Earth. Furthermore, Juno's data suggests the lowest-hanging clouds present during the early 2017 storm loomed several miles lower than even that level — thus, in the storm's wake, the atmosphere had been stirred up deep, deep below the clouds. Juno and Hubble images from 2017 showed a powerful updraft near the heart of the storm, pumping ammonia from deep within Jupiter's atmosphere and rushing it upward to the peaks of the towering storm clouds. Below that plume, Juno and Hubble saw that the updraft had "dried out" most of the ammonia from a patch of Jupiter's atmosphere stretching down at least tens of miles below the base of the storm clouds. Wrapped around the bright spot of the updraft, darker patches shown in Juno's data mark where downdrafts carried a slushy mix of ammonia and water back down to the Jovian depths. And surprisingly, the ammonia was plunging much deeper into the atmosphere than Moeckel and his colleagues expected. If the clouds in the early 2017 storm had just been raining big liquid droplets of ammonia, they shouldn't have been able to fall very deep into the atmosphere before the higher temperature and pressure evaporated the droplets — and the resulting gas wouldn't keep falling. It would just hang out, forming a new ammonia gas layer. But instead, the ammonia fell deeper — according to Moeckel and his colleagues' simulations, down to a depth where the pressure in Jupiter's atmosphere is about 30 times higher than that at sea level on Earth. That means the storm was most likely dropping down big, slushy mush balls of mixed water and ammonia. Mush balls are a weird weather phenomenon on Jupiter that astronomers first pieced together (also from Juno data) a few years ago. Related Stories: — NASA's Juno probe sees active volcanic eruptions on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io (images) — NASA's Juno probe spots massive new volcano on Jupiter moon Io — Jupiter's volcanic moon Io may spew sulfur to icy neighbor Europa's surface Ammonia stays liquid at much lower temperatures than water can, which means droplets of liquid ammonia can mingle with icy crystals of water in Jupiter's storm clouds. The resulting mix is a ball of slush just solid enough to stay together, but definitely mushier than, say, a hailstone; picture a wet snowball. And mush balls raining out of a storm could fall much faster than raindrops, so they'd make it much farther before succumbing to evaporation. The result is that deep within Jupiter's atmosphere, there are patches of ammonia that fell as mush balls from storms raging dozens of miles above – and that ammonia will stay buried down there until the next big storm dredges it up. The scientists published their work on March 28 in the journal Science Advances.
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
This exoplanet has weather never before seen in the universe
Scientists say they are rethinking how the weather works after creating a 3D map of an exoplanet 900 light-years away and discovering a world with jet streams fueling wild storms. WASP-121b, nicknamed Tylos, is a gas giant with a few things in common with Jupiter, but there are more differences than similarities between these two worlds. Researchers used all four telescopes at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile to study the climate and weather patterns on Tylos. According to the ESO, this is the first study in such detail of a world outside our solar system. "This planet's atmosphere behaves in ways that challenge our understanding of how weather works – not just on Earth, but on all planets. It feels like something out of science fiction," ESO researcher Julia Victoria Seidel said. Astronomers Discover Largest Superstructure In Cosmos Tylos rotates counterclockwise so that one side always faces its system's star. This causes one side of the planet to be scorching hot and always daytime. The opposite side is cool and always night. Because of its closeness to the star, a year on Tylos only lasts about 30 hours. Using the ESO's ESPRESSO instrument to combine the light of the four large telescope units into a single signal, the science team was able to detect signatures of multiple chemicals making up layers in Tylos' atmosphere. The team found that the atmosphere on Tylos has layers, each with a unique chemical makeup, including iron, sodium and hydrogen. The graphic below shows the layers: the deepest layer of the atmosphere contains iron, followed by a fast jet stream of sodium moving faster than the planet's rotation, which accelerates as it moves from the hot to the cool side. Lastly, the upper layer of the atmosphere contains hydrogen blasting out from the planet and overlapping with the sodium jet beneath. "What we found was surprising: a jet stream rotates material around the planet's equator, while a separate flow at lower levels of the atmosphere moves gas from the hot side to the cooler side. This kind of climate has never been seen before on any planet," Seidel said. How To Watch Fox Weather These observations showed jet streams spanning half the planet, churning storms high in the sky as they scream across the hot side of the planet. These storms would rival Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the largest storm in our solar system. "Even the strongest hurricanes in the solar system seem calm in comparison," Seidel said. Astronomers will soon be able to study weather on smaller Earth-sized worlds with ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in Chile's Atacama article source: This exoplanet has weather never before seen in the universe
