Thoughts on what the mission to Jupiter arriving next month will find?
I feel like there has to be some solid core, but other than that I can't imagine what they'll uncover, seeing as we can't really do anything with the planet, just look.
Short vid on Juno here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV6fOkIgqD4
Well NASA says their reason is to understand how the first planet formed. According to pretty much everyone, that's Jupiter. So in a few years we might know how a solar system forms following the birth of a star.
That or NASA is secretly speaking to the aliens.
>>8147782
ILLUMINATI
http://www.space.com/12472-juno-probe-spacecraft-jupiter-nasa.html
>>8147772
Do you know if we'll get some closeups of its moons as well, in particular Europe?
The extreme closeups of the cloud tops are going to be awesome. Pretty excited about the possibility of figuring out whether or not Jupiter has a core too (and if it does, how big it is and what it's composed of).
I wish we had more missions like this going on. Honestly, there should no fewer than 10 high-value exploratory missions like this active at any given time. Only having ~1-3 per decade is terrible.
>>8147772
Doesn't Jupiter have a liquid hydrogen core?
>>8149327
That's one theory, but we really have no idea.
>>8149327
It likely has a large rocky/metallic core way deep down in, something with more mass than Earth, that gobbled up all the hydrogen nearby when the solar system was forming.
Neptune almost certainly has a bigger core than Uranus despite being farther out due to planetary migration and eating Kuiper belt objects.
>>8149403
The liquid core is a more likely principle.
large rocky masses hadn't enough time to accumulate into belt configurations by the time (we think) Jupiter came around.
>>8149555
Wouldn't all of the rocky material that the giants have taken in 'sink' over millions of years?
>>8149575
Well, most of the material would break up in atmospheric entry into fine grains of irons and any other metals, and sort of float around in the upper mid atmosphere as part of the weather systems.
Any that did "sink" would separate into component parts, and the liquid hydrogen cores and plasma convection layers would be interspersed with metal particulates.
I very much doubt that there's any kind of solid structured material under the insane temperature and pressure, given that you would have a primarily hydrogen base and heavy elements measured in parts per million.
