Jupiter: Giant of the Solar System

Jupiter is half a billion miles away from the Sun. It is a giant sphere of gases. Jupiter has the most exotic weather pattern we have ever seen in our solar system. It is 84 percent Hydrogen and 14 percent Helium which are the two lightest and most abundant elements in the universe and those are rolled into a mammoth mass. It is 11 times the diameter of the earth. No doubt that it is the largest planet in our solar system which is visible to the naked eye. A day is only 9.9 hours long and it takes 11.8 years to orbit the sun. A 150lbs person will weigh 350lbs on Jupiter. There are thunders clouds made of ammonia, Sulphur, and water. Its electromagnetic radiation is intense that it would kill a traveler to the planet.

How it was born??

Some scientists believe that it may have been a star but failed at the start. Like the sun, it had right ingredients hydrogen and helium but not enough mass to create internal pressure and temperature necessary to create nuclear fusion. So, it became a planet instead. The thought is that Jupiter spinning gases attracted the light elements and grew bigger and bigger. What gases it didn’t take, it spat out in the space. So what it does is, it cleans up the path in the solar system, many planets revolve safely in the space.

Jupiter’s power play:

In July 1994, a comet called the Shoemaker Levi 9, approached towards Jupiter. Once under Jupiter’s gravity, there was no turning back. When it was going to crash, Jupiter’s massive gravitational pull broke the comet into smaller pieces that came in one at a time. These pieces assaulted the planet at a speed of 37 miles per hour. If we take Jupiter out of the picture then that comet might have hit anywhere, might be earth.

Fig.1.1 Broken pieces of Shoemaker Comet hitting the Jupiter.

In 1665, Jupiter’s most fascinating feature was discovered and that is its giant Red Eye which is actually the eye of an enormous storm. It is 12,000 miles wide. It is faster at the edges but calms at the center and it is never-ending. But if there’s no ocean or water there then what’s keeping it going. That is still a mystery.

Fig.1.2 Jupiter’s Red Eye.

Jupiter’s mysteries aren’t limited to the planet itself. Some of its most intriguing elements are circling around it. It’s got several dozens of moons that are big enough to be seen. You can say that Jupiter has its own solar system. And each moon holds its own fascination. Four of them were discovered by Galileo. The first major moon that comes is IO which is a very active place with volcanoes. It has about a hundred volcanoes and some of them are of the size of California. The second is Ganymede which is the largest moon of our solar system. It is 5 times the size of our moon. Callisto is the most heavily crated. And Europa, the ice queen to the Jupiter’s king. No one knows it’s make-up for sure. And scientists are very convinced that there’s water deep under the hard icy surface on the crust. And then the presence of water leads to shaking the question that is we may not be alone.

Fig.1.3. Jupiter’s 4 moons 1. IO 2. Ganymede 3. Callisto 4. Europa.

Above all:

Above of all Jupiter’s imposing features, none is more impressive than the one we cannot see. It’s a bubble buzzing with electrically charged particles. It’s Jupiter’s magnetic sphere. It is the biggest entity in the Solar System. There’s a rounded section faced away from the planet in one direction with a tail flowing out the other direction. This reaches the outer orbit of Saturn. It’s like a monster and it roars also even we can listen to it. If you are driving a dark desert highway, your radio might just tune in to a strange sound of magnetic sphere.

Fig.1.4 Jupiter’s Magnetosphere.

One surprise came in 1979 when it was discovered that Jupiter has a ring, it’s nothing in the order of Saturn. It comes from the material being knocked off from the moons i.e. it’s the collection of dust from the moons.

Fig.1.5 Ring of Jupiter.

There are still many secrets that are still unrevealed by the Jupiter like what causes the Red Eye to keep going and many more. Answering these questions may lead us to other secrets of the planet. But that is a good thing because life without questions will be boring.

Black Holes and Fundamental Laws of Physics

Black holes are structures in the fabric of space and time itself. And there are many such objects in the universe. Despite the mathematical complexity of describing black holes and various ways in which it forms, we also know that they possess a very striking simplicity.

In 2005, black holes were identified by the gravitational waves released from the collision of two massive black holes orbiting each other. In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton described the law of gravity, by observing an apple falling from the tree and then he observed that every falling object behaves in the same way.

Fig.n. Newton’s Diagram of a Planet with a mountain on it.

In the above figure drawn by Newton, there’s a planet with a tall mountain on it and imagine that you’re throwing a ball from point V with a lower velocity, it will fall on D having a lower distance from V. And as the velocity of throwing the ball is increased, it will fall farther from point D, say on E. And if you’re able to throw the ball with a velocity of 7.9km/sec, then the object will keep falling and returns to the initial point. He explained that the moon and other celestial bodies orbiting the earth are objects that are actually falling.

Fig.n. Explaining Gravity is not a force

The next chapter began in 1905, Einstein proposed the theory of relativity. The main aspect of this theory was that “The universe has a speed limit” which is about 3000km/sec which is the speed of light. In 1915, the proposed general relativity, in which he described that Gravity is NOT a Force. Gravity is the manifestation of curvature in space-time. It implied that matter curves space-time and space-time curved forms how matter moves. After the Einstein’s discovery first black hole was found. A black hole is a matter in space-time in which once you go inside the black hole, you can never escape. The boundary of a black hole is called Event Horizon. Now suppose you are driving a spaceship towards a black hole and after crossing the event horizon, no matter how much force you apply, you can’t escape. Similarly, if you light a torch from inside the black hole, the light will remain inside it as shown in the figure below.

Fig.n. Figure showing the event horizon of a black hole.

The concept of black holes started from the evolution of stars. Inside the star, there are two forces acting that is gravity which is pulling everything inside and the pressure which is pushing everything outside and both of these forces are in equilibrium. But as the fuel inside the star i.e. the nuclear fuel is exhausted and if the star is big enough, the star will compress and explode to form a supernova. And then there will be the core of the star that will keep collapsing in or out it and forms a black hole. Despite the complexity of formation of black holes, the final black hole that is created is specified by two numbers:

• ·         It’s Mass
• ·         It’s Spin.

Well precisely there are 3 numbers; the third one is the Electric charge. But it can be neglected as it is very small.

Fig.n. Black hole sucking matter from a star.

If black holes are black, how do we detect them? In the given figure, there’s a black hole and a star. And the black hole is spinning and you can see that it is continuing to strip off the matter from the star. And as it strips off the matter, and because the black hole is rotating, that matter gets swirl around the black hole and heats up and forms the plasma. These plasmas reach a very high temperature and start to emit X-rays. The first indirect attention of black holes came from measuring X-rays produced by black holes as in this picture. Through this approach, now we know that there are many black holes in the Universe and there’s also a massive black hole inside the Milky Way galaxy weighing 3 or 4 million times that of our Sun.

Now, let’s discuss the direct way. In 1916, general relativity predicts gravitational waves traveling at the spent of light. It says that when a matter moves through space-time, it produces gravitational waves. Similarly, the earth also releases gravitational waves, while orbiting the sun. But gravitational waves are small as gravitational forces are weak forces. Now, imagine two black holes are orbiting each other as shown in the figure below. 

Fig.n. Black holes orbiting each other.

And while orbiting they are emitting gravitational waves which are not very strong. But as they approach near to each other, the strain increases and then a stage comes when there is a merger and at that time the strain is the strongest. During the merger, the larger gravitational waves are generated. And after the merging of two black holes, a single one is formed where the strain becomes zero as shown in the figure below. The variation of strain in gravitational waves gives the idea about the presence of black holes in the Universe.

Fig.n. Graph showing variation in strain during merging of two black holes.

Until now we have found many black holes in the Universe but there are many more to be discovered. And still there’s one question which is unanswered and the question is that whether the black holes will bring nightmares for the Universe or they will lead us to some astonishing secrets of the Universe.