http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/r...008/23/image/a/

Looks like Jupiter's getting a case of the measles...

Jupiter: Turbulent Storms May Be Sign Of Global Climate Change:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/...80522121036.htm

Very interesting things happens...

Herebelow a short CG animation I made starting from Hubble map (sharpened and contrast enhanced). Imagine to be about 300000 Km from Jupiter, 10° below equator:
Click to view attachment
Sorry for bad quality, due to attachements size limit. In order to appreciate full original quality, this is a crossed-eyes stereo image:
Click to view attachment

Very nice, Dilo; thank you!

What's interesting here is that Jupiter actually emits more energy then it receives from the Sun. We don't have a damn clue at all really what's going on down there on the "surface"...but possibly something is!

Well... just because a body generates more heat than it receives through insolation doesn't necessarily mean there is something tremendously unique or exotic creating the heat. The original compression of a gas giant generates an enormous amount of heat, which takes an *awfully* long time to percolate up through the planet and out into its less-dense layers (and thence into space).

The heat Jupiter generates may be nothing more than the residual heat from its original accretion.

-the other Doug

True, oDoug. I was thinking more in terms of localized "surface" events. I still have visions of continents of ices, mighty cryovolcanoes erupting, surrounded by vast seas of liquid hydrogen... (yeah, I'm dreamin'!)

I guess the key question here is if Jupiter's deep interior is isotropic or anisotropic. I have pretty poor/absent intuitions when it comes to super-pressurized matter, but it seems to me that it would more likely be isotropic. Liquids mix. The surface of the Sun may be a useful comparison. It's granular on a scale that is tiny compared to the whole Sun. It does have dynamic outbursts here and there, but they are relatively tiny in comparison to the normal background energy output. So a coronal event may throw out a huge burst by the standards of the corona, but it's just a whisper compared to the luminous output that is flooding out in all directions, almost uniformly, all the time.

Could those anisotropies inside Jupiter cause notable effects on the outside? Maybe in the sense that the regularities of the belt system break down at smaller scales to feature chaotic cyclones and anticyclones. I suspect it would be hard to map the surface events to anisotropies in the deep interior.

not anymore...

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/27

Wow! Cool!

That is looking like a variation of the Fujiwhara effect in the Jovian atmosphere. (The bands and belts effectively "locking in" and preventing any large N-S drift of the systems.)

It'll be really neat to see what happens next. Will JR2 orbit and get absorbed? Will it escape only to circle the planet and get sucked back in another time? What will be the effect of bonus turbulence from Junior?

Stay tuned... Go JR2!

-Mike

If only we had an orbiter at Jupiter now. Perhaps we could detect the "burp" from the GRS in radio waves

Get in my belly!!!

LOL, you read my mind (I just couldn't come up with a forum-safe way to say his name, F.B. I guess)

...gee, Ted, when you edit a post you just don't hold back!!! Hilarious!

lol. I am a huge geek.

Actually I was just thinking of using that same quote for a caption on Phoenix now that TEGA is open and we they are able to scrape up some ice.

I've been reading up a bit on this, and I keep running across the phrase 'experts believe this (presumably consuming/tearing up other storms) may be how the great red spot has sustained itself for all these centuries' or similar.
However I can't find out who these experts are or when they suggested it! It seems very reasonable, since jupiter storms do merge with each other to become bigger and stronger, and it clearly owned red jr without any problems, but who actually suggested that this mechanism is how the GRS has lasted so long?

I also came across the notion that the GRS is a strange attractor, and that jupiters atmosphere must produce at least one storm like it at any given time- is there anything to that or is kookery? I intend to keep searching myself but any guidance (I've never been much interested in jupiter before) would be much appreciated!

Learning about Jupiter, and about the Great red spot has made me feel humbled, and a little afraid! So, I'm going to have a stab at some err...poetry, I'm sure one of the admins will remove or move it if it's not appropriate here:

No mere storm, like the delicates swirls of white on other worlds
It is not its color, that of blood, that marks it out
Or its size, as vast as worlds
But its survival, all down the dark, turbulent, ages and chaos of its home
And the murder of its weaker kin, dismembering and feeding
Like a thing with a dark, coiled, will of its own

Its reign continues
All usurpers crushed
Its stares out at the stars
Jupiters great beast

Hey, man...well done!!! Very evocative, in fact. The titanic forces at work here can barely be visualized by us, so your metaphors were very apropros. Thanks for posting this!

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...amp;#entry84277

Thanks guys! The sheer scale and complexity of jupiters atmosphere, and by extension tthe other gas planets, is fascinating, and I didn't realise there were still so many mysteries to be solved there. We don't even know why the GRS is red?! I think theres still a lot to learn from jupiter!

Well Jupiter is my favorite object whenever I use my 6 inch refractor and nowadays the planet stands low in the South of Northern hemisphere skies. Just wanted to remark that during the last weekend of November 2008, the Moon, Jupiter and Venus will be all together from our Earthly viewpoint.

Back on topic about the Great Red Spot and it's little brother: I remember that the late Carl Sagan said in one of the Cosmos episode that the red color of the counter-rotating great red spot might be caused by complex organic molecules and he even imagined hunters and pray floating in the atmospheres of our giant neigbour...

From what i've read there are water clouds, likely consisting of liquid droplets rather than ice crystals, and hydrocarbons such as benzene have also been detected. If we are searching for molecules of astrobiological interest why doesn't the combination of liquid water drops, organic chemistry, and abundant energy make jupiter more interesting?

Everything eventually gets pulled back down, cooked, and recycled but wouldn't it be of interest to see what chemistry takes place while these things are in the upper reaches?

Edit: I may well be treading on thin (forum rule) ice here, so if this post is innapropriate, or looks to start an inapropriate discussion, I hope an admin will remove it.

I think you answered your own question there. Jupiter's atmosphere is too dynamic; I can't imagine that there would be time enough for really advanced chemical reactions to occur.

I'm not sure how long that 'eventually' is though. Storm clouds on earth can last for days, how long does it take for tholins in contact with water to start forming interesting things? The sheer scale of things on jupiter or saturn might work to draw things out a bit longer, and the chemical complexity of jupiter (ammonia clouds as well as water souunds interesting) probably allows a much greater array of reactions to take place.

The short span of time would mean that any reactions that would take place would have to do so fairly fast, and there is abundant energy to drive them, which would make a nice study in contrast to the grand slow pace of reactions on titan- different ends of the same scale if you like.

...Which has in turn got me wondering; has any experimental work been done on what happens to tholins (or other likely photochemistry products) when introduced to ammonia? All the papers I can find are about ammonia water mixtures.