Something Is Wrong With Jupiter — Should We Be Worried?

[00:00:09]Scientists studying Jupiter have noticed something unusual happening to its most famous feature. The Great Red Spot, a massive storm that has been raging for centuries, is changing. Observations from NASA spacecraft and groundbased telescopes show that the storm is shrinking, becoming more circular, and behaving in ways that researchers did not expect. The Great Red Spot is not just any storm. It is the largest and longest lasting [music] storm ever observed in the solar system. It has been continuously tracked since at least the 1830s and possibly even earlier based on historical observations from the 1600s.

[00:00:53]At its largest, the storm was big enough to fit three Earths side by side. Today, it has shrunk significantly and is now about 16,000 [music] km wide, which is still large enough to swallow Earth, but much smaller than it used to be. Scientists have been tracking this change for more than a century. In the late 1800s, the Great Red Spot measured over 30,000 km across.

[00:01:20]Since then, it has steadily decreased in size. To understand what is happening, researchers have been studying the storm in more detail than ever before. One of the most important sources of data comes from NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016.

[00:01:39]Juno revealed that the Great Red Spot is not just a surface feature. It extends deep into Jupiter's atmosphere, reaching depths of about 300 to 500 km. That makes it more like a massive atmospheric structure than a simple storm. At the same time, scientists noticed something unexpected at the edges of the storm.

[00:02:02]Portions of the outer cloud layers appear to be breaking off. This process, sometimes called flaking, involves pieces of red material peeling away from the storm and drifting into the surrounding atmosphere.

[00:02:17]This raised an important question. Is the Great Red Spot slowly disappearing?

[00:02:23]The answer is not so simple. Even though the storm is shrinking, it remains extremely powerful. Wind speeds inside the Great Red Spot can still reach up to 430 to 680 km hour. That makes it far stronger than any hurricane on Earth.

[00:02:42]Researchers believe that interactions with nearby smaller storms may play a key role in its behavior. These smaller vortices can either feed energy into the Great Red Spot or disrupt its outer structure, causing parts of it to break away. In other words, the storm may be losing size, but not necessarily losing strength. Another unusual feature is its color. The Great Red Spot has changed in appearance over time, sometimes becoming darker and more intense, and at other times fading to a lighter orange.

[00:03:20]Scientists think this color is caused by chemical reactions involving sunlight, ammonia, and other compounds in Jupiter's upper atmosphere. Changes in these chemical processes could explain why the storm's color varies over time.

[00:03:35]There is also growing evidence that storms on Jupiter are not permanent.

[00:03:40]Observations show that large atmospheric features can form, evolve, and eventually disappear. This suggests that even the great red spot may not last forever. Some models indicate that if the current trend continues, the storm could keep shrinking over the coming decades. However, predicting its future is difficult because Jupiter's atmosphere is extremely complex. The planet is covered in powerful jet streams that circle it at high speeds.

[00:04:11]These jet streams help stabilize large storms, but they can also stretch and reshape them over time. Recent data shows that Jupiter's atmosphere is layered and dynamic with multiple storm systems interacting at different depths.

[00:04:27]This [music] makes it difficult to determine whether the changes we are seeing are part of a long-term decline or just a temporary phase. What is clear is that the Great Red Spot is not as stable as scientists once believed. Even a storm that has lasted for centuries can change. NASA and other space agencies continue to monitor Jupiter closely using spacecraft and telescopes.

[00:04:53]Each new observation [music] helps scientists better understand how extreme weather systems behave on gas [music] giant planets. For now, the Great Red Spot is still there, still active, and still one of the most recognizable features [music] in the solar system.

[00:05:12]But the changes we are seeing suggest that even the largest and longest lasting storms can evolve and one of the most iconic features on Jupiter may be slowly entering a new phase.

[00:05:27]Hey, space buffs, just how well do you know our solar system?

[00:05:32]Guess the planet. It's more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. It's covered with striking swirls and stripes, which are actually windy clouds of cold ammonia and water floating in an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. Still no clue? Then look at this. It's the infamous Great Red Spot.

[00:05:54]A giant storm larger than our home planet that has been raging for hundreds of years.

[00:06:01]Right you are. This cloudy world is Jupiter. And the main question is, is this planet our enemy or friend?

[00:06:10]NASA's Juno Orbiter is exploring this gas giant at the moment, sending us tons of useful data.

[00:06:18]Jupiter is so big that 11 Earths could fit across its equator. If our planet was the size of a grape, Jupiter would be a basketball.

[00:06:28]The gas giant is the fifth planet from the sun, orbiting around 484 million miles away.

[00:06:36]And even though for us Earthlings, our blue green world seems to be the most important among all the other planets, we live in Jupiter's solar system. After all, it accounts for 75% of the mass of all the planets in our star system. And it's also 318 times more massive than Earth.

[00:06:58]And whatever Jupiter wants, Jupiter gets. Jupiter wants to throw stuff across the solar system. No problem.

[00:07:06]After all, this gas giant doesn't have its immense gravity for nothing. It yanks material from the asteroid belt, stopping poor space rocks from forming anything larger than series, the [music] only dwarf planet located in the inner solar system.

[00:07:22]Jupiter is hungry. It gobbles up comets, asteroids, and whatnot. Jupiter's board.

[00:07:28]It hurdles everything it manages to capture on weward trajectories.

[00:07:34]This gas giant must have caused a lot of destruction over the course of its life, which is around 4.5 billion years.

[00:07:43]But here's the thing. Some scientists think that we might owe our very existence and the existence of our planet to Jupiter's protective gravity.

[00:07:52]It may sound confusing, but by greedily swallowing up dangerous space objects, this planet [music] vacuums the solar system. Other astronomers don't agree with this theory. They claim Jupiter is a hooligan, bothering peaceful and safe comets and sending them to unexpected places.

[00:08:11]You see, some of the most dangerous objects in our solar system are long period comets.

[00:08:17]Those are huge chunks of ice and rock coming from the depths of the or cloud which lies far beyond Pluto.

[00:08:25]Some of them get pushed into the inner solar system where they dash past the sun. There's a chance that the most devastating extinction on Earth was caused by a long period comet.

[00:08:38]As such comets make their way through the solar system, they likely interact with Jupiter's gravity. The gas giant pushes them this way and that, consuming some of them like delicious ice rock burgers. But does Jupiter push such comets out of their dangerous orbit so that they don't smash into Earth? Or does this gas giant actually divert the trajectories of the comets that would otherwise miss Earth? No one knows.

[00:09:06]Astronomers sometimes call Jupiter a failed star. The gas giant indeed contains a lot of helium and hydrogen.

[00:09:15]The material stars are mostly made of.

[00:09:18]But the planet's mass isn't enough to start a fusion reaction in its core. And that's exactly how stars produce energy.

[00:09:26]They fuse the atoms of hydrogen together under extreme pressure and heat and create helium.

[00:09:33]In the process, they also release light and heat.

[00:09:38]Jupiter could start a nuclear reaction and become a star only if it was 75 times its current mass.

[00:09:47]Paradoxically, if Jupiter even got more massive, it would also get smaller.

[00:09:53]This additional mass would make the planet denser and it would cause the gas giant to start pulling it in on itself.

[00:10:01]Astronomers are almost sure that even if Jupiter was four times its current mass, it would still remain the same size.

[00:10:11]Jupiter has between 80 and 95 moons. But one of the most popular ones these days is Europa.

[00:10:19]Imagine a still frozen world. It's ancient, about 4.5 billion years old.

[00:10:26]It's barely heated by the rays of the sun and covered with a thick layer of ice.

[00:10:32]This world is smaller than our moon, but a bit larger than Pluto. That's what Europa, the sixth satellite of Jupiter and one of the biggest moons in the solar system, looks like. And the coolest thing about this faraway place, it might host life.

[00:10:49]Astronomers consider Europa to be one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for new forms of life.

[00:10:57]All because this moon has a huge saltwater ocean with a depth of 40 to 100 miles. Yes, it is hidden under a layer of ice that is estimated to be from 10 to 20 m thick, but it's still potentially habitable. Astronomers claim that plumes of water erupt from cracks in the ice shell and release the contents of the moon's ocean into space.

[00:11:24]For a long time, scientists have been wondering about Jupiter's X-ray auroras.

[00:11:30]What causes them? It seems like the 40-year-old mystery has been solved.

[00:11:35]Jupiter's breathtaking X-ray auroral emissions are triggered by electrically charged particles called ions.

[00:11:43]They crash into the gas giant's atmosphere, and here's the result.

[00:11:48]But astronomers couldn't understand how those ions got to the atmosphere in the first place.

[00:11:55]But recently, they've seen the ions surfing Jupiter's magnetic field all the way down to the planet's atmosphere.

[00:12:03]Astronomers have received this data thanks to NASA's Juno spacecraft and ESA's XMM Newton telescope situated in Earth's orbit.

[00:12:15]Now on our home planet, auroras are only visible in a belt surrounding the magnetic poles between 65 and 80° latitude. Anything beyond 80° and auroras disappear.

[00:12:29]But Jupiter's X-ray auroras are much more inconsistent. They pulsate regularly pullward of the main belt and sometimes [music] they're different at the north and south poles.

[00:12:42]Scientists have figured out that this pulsation is caused by the fluctuations in Jupiter's magnetic field. You see, when the planet rotates, it drags behind its magnetic field. Struck by the particles of the solar wind, it gets compressed.

[00:12:58]This heats the particles trapped in Jupiter's magnetic field, and they start moving along the magnetic field lines, producing magnificent auroras.

[00:13:10]Another feature Jupiter is famous for is its Great Red Spot, an enormous storm raging in the southern hemisphere of the gas giant.

[00:13:20]Its top parts tower more than 5 m above the surrounding cloud tops. The storm is more than twice as wide as our planet.

[00:13:28][music] At the edges of the storm, the wind speeds reach 270 to 420 mph.

[00:13:37]That's faster than Earth's tornadoes.

[00:13:40]The hot gases in the planet's atmosphere are always moving, rising, falling, and swirling. Just like on our planet, when cooler and hotter gases mix and merge into one another, they form giant circling storms.

[00:13:55]Astronomers think that once several enormous storms could have come together, creating the Great Red Spot, and now it keeps raging by constantly drawing cool gases from below and hot gases from above. Plus, this monster of a storm absorbs other smaller vortices.

[00:14:14]They make the spot even more powerful.

[00:14:19]Several theories try to explain why the storm has its trademark color.

[00:14:24]It varies from whitish and pale salmon [music] to orange and brick red. Some scientists believe the answer lies below the great red spot closer to the planet's surface. A colorless layer of ammonium hydrooulfide might be reacting with a cosmic rays or the UV radiation coming from the sun. This somehow gives the spot its pretty red color, but so far [music] it's just a theory.

[00:14:50]Astronomers have been observing the Great Red Spot since the 1830s.

[00:14:56]And for the first time, the storm was spotted in 1665 and described as the permanent spot. In other words, the storm is almost 400 years old.

[00:15:07]Strangely, it's been shrinking in size since the beginning of the 21st century.

[00:15:12]In 2019, it began flaking at the edges with small pieces breaking off and vanishing. If this process continues, by 2040, the Great Red Spot might become circular, or it may simply disappear.

[00:15:30]Scientists keep finding new planets they call super Earths. It's a class of more massive planets [music] than Earth, but way lighter than ice giants, such as Uranus and Neptune. Super Earths can be made of rock, gas, or a combination [music] of these two. They are often twice or even up to 10 times bigger than [music] the Earth. They're interesting to study, but kind of too far away from us. They're pretty common outside of our solar system, together with other interesting planets like many [music] Neptunes. Those can also be gas dwarfs, ice giants, or huge rocky bodies. But again, we don't have anything like that.

[00:16:08]But something [music] we do have that those other solar systems don't, Jupiter. It's the biggest and heaviest object that orbits our sun. This king of planets possesses a powerful force to dominate [music] our solar system.

[00:16:22]Jupiter is notorious for eating planets.

[00:16:26]A protolanet [music] slammed into it about 4.5 billion years ago when Jupiter was [music] still a young planet in its early stages. This protolanet was 10 times heavier than Earth and was made of ice and rock. The collision was huge. Jupiter's core broke apart and helium [music] and hydrogen mixed with denser materials. Through time, the heavy material settled back into the dense core, which is what we see today. And if it swallowed a planet before, it might keep doing it as well.

[00:16:56]We suspect our solar system used to have many more large planets than it has now.

[00:17:01]For example, it's kind of empty around Mercury today. Similar areas around many other central stars are definitely more packed with intermediate mass planets with the size between Earth and Neptune.

[00:17:14]Our solar system was a chaotic place at its beginnings. Young stars were surrounded by swirling discs of dust and gas and planets would form out of that debris, something like trees when they're springing up from [music] the ground. Small rocky planets would form in the strong heat and light close to stars, while gas giants would [music] form farther out where temperatures were lower, which means they could preserve more gasy materials. [music] And even though planets in our solar system seem pretty stable and peaceful today, following their orbit, they weren't that calm before. Some planets didn't have a circular orbit. They had oblong, more eccentric paths. It took them swinging first toward their stars and then farther away. It was like they had been thrown off kilter by the gravity [music] of other planets on their way. There's something called the grand tac theory. It explains things happening in the first few million years when our [music] solar system was forming. At some point, Jupiter, one of the key players here, may have been pulled in closer by our central star.

[00:18:16][music] After that, it went back and took a huge cloud of debris. It was like a sailboat when it tacks around a buoy. This kind of messed with [music] planets that were in the process of formation. After Saturn was fully formed, [music] our close neighbors in the solar system cleared out a little. But if the idea about Grand Tac is correct, Jupiter had grabbed everything in its way and its migrations had caused more collisions in this area. Jupiter might have delivered some of the water that now fills the oceans we have on our planet. It shepherds plenty of asteroids. From time to time, it sends some whizzing into interstellar space or amongst the planets in our solar system. It may have even taken part in the dinosaur extinction 66 million years ago. When the huge space rock hit the Earth, it left a crater off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. It all caused earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis that made a huge impact on all animal and plant life on Earth. No one knows where it came from. We're not even sure if it was an asteroid or a comet. One theory says it may have been a comet that came from the or cloud, which is made of icy debris and is located somewhere at the edge of our solar system. It could have been bumped off course by Jupiter and its powerful gravitational force. This way, our solar system was like a pinball machine where Jupiter, the biggest planet, kicks incoming comets into orbits that send them closer to the sun. When these comets are near the sun, they can go through strong tidal forces that break them apart and eventually create shrapnelike pieces of a comet. That event was a point when our mamalian ancestors started to [music] rule. That means without Jupiter, there might not be us either, nor the Earth. It seemed like our biggest planet came swinging in, destroyed older [music] planets, and cleared the way for smaller worlds like ours. Jupiter may have been the reason why we can't find planet 9 right now.

[00:20:18]Scientists believe it exists and they think it could be hiding somewhere beyond Neptune, but not Pluto. There are three zones in our solar system. [music] The inner planets, outer planets, and whatever there is beyond. The mysterious planet could be the size of the Earth or Mars. It swirled among the gas giants before they eventually swept it toward the outer parts of our solar system or even somewhere into deep space. Jupiter has stripes because of differences in temperature, atmospheric gas, and chemical composition. Scientists used to think the only reason for these different colors was the [music] mighty atmospheric wind and material circulating between layers of the atmosphere. Now we know the light colored [music] stripes or so-called zones show us where the gas rises. When the stripes are dark colored, they're called [music] belts and can tell us where gas is sinking. Jupiter's moons could also be why the planet is stripey because they're tugging on its atmospheric convection cells. At the center of Jupiter, there's [music] a dense liquid core made of helium and metallic hydrogen together with dissolved heavier elements. As we go further from its center, the temperature and pressure inside the planet drop off.

[00:21:30]That way, the liquid interior gives way to gases from the atmosphere. Again, [music] mostly helium and hydrogen. No one knows how deep this liquid gas boundary lies, but [music] the planet is probably fully liquid, a couple of thousand miles under its cloud tops.

[00:21:46][music] Jupiter would still be bigger than some other giants like Saturn if we could strip its gases. Jupiter is sometimes even called a failed star, although [music] that's not quite correct. It's mostly made of hydrogen like regular stars, but it's still not massive enough to start thermonuclear reactions in its [music] core, which would eventually turn it into a real star. In theory, every object could be turned into a star if you only add enough matter to it. [music] If there's enough mass, the temperature and internal pressure will increase and start thermonuclear reactions. So, to turn Jupiter into a star such as [music] the sun, you'd have to make it 1,000 times more massive. But to form a cooler red dwarf, you'd only need 80 Jupiter masses more. That way, Jupiter won't spontaneously become a new star of our solar system. But if many space objects with similar mass collide with it, or in other words, if Jupiter eats them, then maybe you never know. But in theory, if it could become a massive star, [music] it would have stopped other planets from forming in stable orbits. It would have also increased the radiation that the surface of those planets get, which is why it would be really hard for life to develop in our solar system. Jupiter is the planet that spins the fastest in our solar system. It only needs 10 hours to make a full rotation on its axis. Even though [music] it's huge, more than 300 times bigger than the Earth, and 2.5 times more massive than the rest of the planets in our entire solar system together, but if it got more massive, it would shrink. More mass would make Jupiter denser, which means it would begin pulling in on itself. So, it could get four times its mass and would still be the same size.

[00:23:34]Uh-oh, hurricane alert. Everyone's hiding. The speed of the wind outside is more than 75 mph. Seems like a lot, but this storm is moving at 400 mph. Wait, do such speeds [music] exist? Yep, but to see a storm that fast, you'll have to travel to Jupiter. So, [music] let the journey begin.

[00:23:56]The planet is huge. Almost 1300 Earths could fit into this gas giant. [music] It's also incredibly hot with the temperatures reaching about 43,000° Fahrenheit at the planet's core.

[00:24:09]Unfortunately, you can't land on Jupiter's surface because, well, being a gas giant, it doesn't have any solid surface, but you can go deeper into Jupiter's [music] atmosphere. Look at these thick brown, yellow, red, and white clouds passing by. They're what make the planet look colorful and kind of striped. If you continue descending toward the center of the planet, you'll see its atmosphere, mostly made up of hydrogen and helium gas becoming liquid.

[00:24:36]It happens because of immense atmospheric pressure. The planet's core itself is a mysterious object.

[00:24:43]Scientists still haven't figured out whether it's a molten ball of thick [music] liquid or a solid rock 14 to 18 times the mass of Earth. Anyway, exploring Jupiter isn't the main goal of your trip. No, you've arrived here to see the Great Red Spot. It's an enormous storm raging in the southern hemisphere of the gas giant. Its top parts are towering more than 5 miles [music] above the tops of the surrounding clouds. The storm is 1.3 times wider than our planet. In 2017, NASA's Juno Space Probe managed to collect lots of data about the [music] red spot. And it turned out that this monster of a storm goes more than 200 miles down into the planet's atmosphere. That's 30 to 100 times deeper than any ocean on Earth. [music] But these measurements are most likely imprecise, and the storm's true roots can be reaching even deeper. The Great Red Spot is colder than the rest of the atmosphere. And keep in mind that Jupiter's temperatures [music] are -234° F in the upper cloud layers. On the other hand, the closer to the [music] core, the hotter it gets. Mysteriously, the highest temperatures ever recorded on the gas giant occurred in the atmosphere, right above the Great Red Spot. There, the heat reached 2,400°.

[00:26:02]This temperature is higher than that of lava on our planet. Astronomers believe that the turbulence caused by the storm [music] might produce gravitational and sound waves that can be responsible for the superheating. But the storm itself is warmer at the bottom than at the top.

[00:26:19]People have been watching the moving vortex [music] on Jupiter for more than 150 years. Some time ago, astronomers predicted that it would gradually slow down and become smaller or [music] disappear entirely. But that turned out not to be the case. After having [music] analyzed all the data received with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers were baffled to discover that the winds at the outer boundaries of the storm had actually picked up speed. The change in the wind speed is no more than 1 1/2 mph during one Earth year. It's a tiny change, but however small the difference is, it still means a lot. The wind speed at the edges of the storm can reach a mind-boggling 400 mph. That's faster than Earth's tornadoes. At the same time, if you found yourself at the center of the Great Red Spot, you wouldn't be too impressed. The winds there move way more slowly. Scientists [music] face lots of challenges when they were trying to understand the mystery that was the Great Red Spot. It's unclear what fuels the storm. Can it be the nature of the storm's home planet? Since it's a gas giant, Jupiter doesn't have any solid ground, so there's no friction, which might be the only thing that could make the storm weaken. The hot gases in the planet's atmosphere are always moving, rising, falling, swirling, just like on our home planet, where cooler and warmer air mix and merge into one another, forming giant [music] circling storms.

[00:27:49]Astronomers think that once several enormous storms could have come together and created the Great Red [music] Spot.

[00:27:55]Then now it keeps going by constantly drawing cool gases from below and hot gases from above. Plus, the storm might be absorbing other smaller vortices.

[00:28:06]This makes the Great Red Spot even more powerful. Unfortunately, thick clouds on Jupiter don't allow astronomers to see what's going on in the planet's [music] lower atmosphere. Scientists have been speculating on what may hide beneath the Great Red Spot for decades. Is it a massive volcano? unlikely. Jupiter is mostly made up of gases, and it doesn't have a crust that could crack, letting lava escape from the planet's interior.

[00:28:33]There are also a few theories explaining why the storm has its trademark color.

[00:28:38]It varies from whitish and pale salmon to bright orange and brick red. Some scientists believe the answer lies deep below the Great Red Spot, [music] closer to the planet's surface. A colorless layer of gas might be reacting to the UV radiation coming from the sun. This is probably [music] what gives the storm its red color, but so far it's just a theory. Hey, your guess is as good as mine, huh? Jupiter isn't the only planet that can boast having a giant storm.

[00:29:07]Another one as wide as our home planet rages on Saturn. [music] It's called the Great White Spot. How clever. The storm has a tale of white clouds encircling the entire planet. It occurs every 30 years or so. This storm indeed starts as a spot, [music] but then it starts stretching and stretching. Astronomers have figured out that the great white spot [music] is actually a huge system of thunderstorms.

[00:29:34]At the top of the storm, lightning [music] can flash more than 10 times per second. But the main mystery about the great white spot is where it gets its energy from. Some scientists think it may be powered by the sun. Others argue that the storm's cloud pattern only makes sense [music] if there's an internal source of heat that can power the winds. Anyway, [music] severe storms on different planets of the solar system aren't the only space mystery [music] that makes astronomers scratch their heads. Let's move to Pluto, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, and explore [music] its atmosphere. It rises really high above the surface of the planet and has more than 20 layers, all of them freezing cold and [music] extremely condensed. By the way, our moon also has some sort of an atmosphere [music] called an exosphere. It consists of helium, neon, and argon. It's 10 trillion times less dense [music] than Earth's atmosphere. While traveling through space, watch out for black holes. Woo! A black hole is a place where gravity [music] is so strong that even light can't get out. But black holes can sometimes behave like a massive galactic volcano. From time to time, they flare up. Sounds like me. But instead of spewing lava, they produce enormous [music] amounts of energy, and this phenomenon leaves gaping holes in the surrounding material and gas. A short while ago, scientists discovered one of the largest craters in the universe. Radio and X-ray telescopes detected a super massive black hole that threw a [music] temper tantrum many many years ago. It happened in a galaxy cluster about 390 million lightyears away from Earth. The crater this event left behind could fit 15 Milky Way galaxies. Yeah, I can't get my head around that either. During your space voyage, think twice before landing on unknown planets. Otherwise, you may end up in a place [music] like K2 141b.

[00:31:30]That's a planet outside of our solar system. At first glance, it's not that [music] different from Earth. It has liquid oceans that evaporate, form clouds, condense, and get back to the surface as rain, but instead of water, [music] it rains rocks. The surface of this exoplanet is covered with lava seas [music] dozens of miles deep. The temperatures on the K241B reach 5,000° [music] during the day. That's toasty enough for the magma in the oceans to vaporize into the atmosphere. Then supersonic winds, which can move at the speed of 1 m/s, carry this rock vapor into the planet's night side. The vaporized magma cools down, becomes liquid again, and falls as a rocky rain. Uh-uh. Not a vacation spot. Too hot. I'll pass.

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