Faint Echoes, Distant Stars

Author:Ben Bova
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

THE GIANT PLANET

Jupiter is indeed the giant of the solar system, 11 times wider and nearly 318 times more massive than Earth. Yet this enormous world spins so fast that its “day” is only nine hours and fifty-five minutes long. Jupiter is spinning so rapidly that even a glance at the planet shows a noticeable flattening at the poles, like a squashed beach ball. And like a beach ball, Jupiter is colored with gaudy stripes of red, white, and brownish hues.

The atmosphere is mostly hydrogen, with about 10 percent helium. There are three layers of clouds: the highest is composed of ammonia ice crystals, the middle of ammonium hydrosulfide (a mixture of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide), and the lowest may contain water ice or even drops of liquid water. The clouds cover the planet completely; it is impossible to see what lies below them.

The clouds zip along, strung out in bands parallel to the equator, one band heading east and the adjacent band west. Driven by the planet’s rapid rotation and heat welling up from the interior, hurricane-strength wind speeds are common. The cloud bands rub against one another and stir up cyclonic eddies the size of Earthly continents.

The Great Red Spot is an enormous oval system three times the size of Earth. It is obviously some form of atmospheric disturbance, but that is like calling a killer hurricane a low-pressure weather system. It rotates counterclockwise, completing one rotation in about six Earth days. The Great Red Spot has been observed for more than 300 years. Is it a perpetual storm? How far down into Jupiter’s interior does it reach? What gives it its red coloration? Unknown, until spacecraft delve beneath those cloud tops to investigate the hidden world of Jupiter.

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