Updated

Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 30

Juno Data Confirm Jupiter Has No Solid Surface or Conventional Core at 71,488-Km Radius

Updated

Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 30

Juno Data Confirm Jupiter Has No Solid Surface or Conventional Core at 71,488-Km Radius

Q: If Jupiter lacks a solid surface, what invisible force crushed NASA's probe before it could reach the planet's mysterious core?

It was Jupiter’s immense pressure, driven by the planet’s gravity and rapidly rising heat, that destroyed NASA’s Galileo probe. Jupiter has no solid ground to hit. As the probe fell deeper into the hydrogen-helium atmosphere, the gas became steadily denser and hotter. That increasing overlying weight created crushing pressure, while temperatures climbed high enough to overwhelm the probe’s systems and structure. NASA’s direct evidence comes from the Galileo atmospheric probe, which entered Jupiter on 7 December 1995 at about 170,000 km/h. After surviving extreme braking, it descended by parachute for 58 minutes and transmitted data on winds, temperature, pressure, lightning and composition. The signal ended at about 22 to 23 bars of pressure, around 120 kilometres below the one-bar reference level. NASA says the probe was not seen striking any surface; instead, heat and pressure destroyed it as it continued downward. The “invisible force” was therefore not a hidden barrier or exotic field, but the crushing weight of Jupiter’s deep atmosphere itself, intensified by gravity. Deeper still, scientists expect hydrogen to transition into supercritical fluid and then metallic hydrogen under far greater pressures. But Galileo never came close to any core region. It was destroyed in the upper atmospheric layers, long before it could approach Jupiter’s still poorly understood interior.

2 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Jul 30

Juno measurements and recent analyses reinforce that Jupiter has no solid surface to hit: its atmosphere grades continuously into denser, hotter fluid, while even the central region appears extended and mixed rather than sharply bounded.
At the standard one-bar reference level—used to define Jupiter’s 71,488-km equatorial radius and 66,842-km polar radius—there is still only gas below; deeper down, hydrogen becomes supercritical and later metallic without a clean gas-liquid or fluid-solid boundary.
Galileo’s 1995 probe showed what entry looks like in practice, surviving a 170,000-kph arrival and transmitting for 58 minutes before heat silenced it at about 22 to 23 bars, roughly 120 km below the reference level.
That final reading was still far above Jupiter’s deeper interior, where pressures rise to megabars and metallic hydrogen acts as an electrically conducting fluid that helps generate the planet’s magnetic field.
Juno gravity data have also weakened the old textbook picture of a compact rocky core, favoring a diluted or fuzzy core with heavy elements spread through a broad region—making Jupiter a planet with no accessible ground anywhere.

Sources

spacedaily.com9d ago

Jupiter Lacks Solid Surface or Conventional Core, Scientific Data Confirms

IEEE Spectrum9d ago

Revealed: Jupiter's Secret Power Source - IEEE Spectrum

If Earth-like ground doesn't exist on gas giants, what bizarre phenomena await in the crushing, bottomless depths of Jupiter's atmosphere?

If Jupiter lacks a solid surface, what invisible force crushed NASA's probe before it could reach the planet's mysterious core?

Beyond the helium rain, could the bizarre metallic oceans hidden inside Jupiter rewrite our entire understanding of planetary physics?

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2 total

spacedaily.com9d ago

Jupiter Lacks Solid Surface or Conventional Core, Scientific Data Confirms

IEEE Spectrum9d ago

Revealed: Jupiter's Secret Power Source - IEEE Spectrum

Juno Data Confirm Jupiter Has No Solid Surface or Conventional Core at 71,488-Km Radius

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