It is only logical to expect that the gas giants in our Solar System would be in an icy state. After all, they are really far from the Sun, with Jupiter being over 754 million kilometers away from the Sun, about five times the distance of the Earth from the said ball of hot gas. And so it was to the surprise of many when NASA’s Voyager spacecraft sailed past these planets and found out that these 4 planets were scorching hot. It was…
a revelation as jarring as finding a bonfire inside your freezer.
Follow-up observations by ground-based telescopes and the Galileo and Cassini spacecraft demonstrated that their planet-wide fevers have persisted through time. Their planetary pyrexias are acute: Jupiter’s lower latitudes, for example, should be a frigid −110 degrees Celsius. Instead, the atmosphere there cooks at 325 degrees. What incognito incinerator is behind this? And how is this unknown heat source warming not just a single spot on the planet, but the entire upper atmosphere?
Finally, after 50 years of looking for answers, scientists have finally found the cause of this puzzling phenomenon: the respective auroras of the planets.
More about this over at Quanta Magazine.
(Image Credit: NASA/ ESA/ Quanta Magazine)