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Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
Fri May 26, 2017, 08:17 AM May 2017

More Jupiter Weirdness: Giant Planet May Have Huge, 'Fuzzy' Core


By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | May 26, 2017 08:01am ET


Jupiter's deep interior appears to be as strange and otherworldly as the gas giant's storm-studded exterior, new observations by NASA's Juno spacecraft suggest.

Scientists have generally thought that Jupiter either harbors a relatively compact core 1 to 10 times as massive as Earth or no core at all, said Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton, who's based at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

But neither of these hypotheses fits with the gravity data collected so far by Juno, which has been orbiting Jupiter since July 2016.

"There seems to be a fuzzy core, and it may be much larger than anybody had anticipated," Bolton said Thursday (May 25) during a NASA press conference announcing the first detailed science results from Juno's mission.

More:
http://www.space.com/37005-jupiter-fuzzy-core-nasa-juno.html?utm_source=notification
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More Jupiter Weirdness: Giant Planet May Have Huge, 'Fuzzy' Core (Original Post) Judi Lynn May 2017 OP
When I was a kid Loki Liesmith May 2017 #1
Arthur C. Clarke posited that idea in the 2010: Odyssey Two novel. lastlib May 2017 #2
He got it from some papers Loki Liesmith May 2017 #3
I sort of assumed that's what it was. Igel May 2017 #4

lastlib

(22,981 posts)
2. Arthur C. Clarke posited that idea in the 2010: Odyssey Two novel.
Fri May 26, 2017, 09:59 AM
May 2017

A fascinating idea, though I'm not sure I would subscribe to it.

Loki Liesmith

(4,602 posts)
3. He got it from some papers
Fri May 26, 2017, 10:55 AM
May 2017

About gas giants like Uranus and Neptune. Basically carbon is heavy and drifts down and then gets squeezed. Idea was if they could do it, Jupiter could do it better.

Hey, he was on the money about Europa.

Igel

(35,194 posts)
4. I sort of assumed that's what it was.
Sat May 27, 2017, 02:39 AM
May 2017

Perhaps a rocky core, but the pressure would compress what would otherwise be atmosphere to a solid. How it transitioned from a thick, highly-compressed gas to solid would vary by pressure and temperature.

Never saw how it could be gaseous down to a rocky core. That just never made sense, not with the metallic hydrogen model that yielded a magnetic field.

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