2707200X From United States of America, joined Mar 2009, 6939 posts, RR: 1 Posted (5 months 1 week 3 days 2 hours ago) and read 1687 times:
I wonder what the exact surface of Jupiter is like, I could not find any information on what the surface of these kinds of these planets are like. I know the Galileo probe was sent into the atmosphere at the force of 230 x gravity entry and after it recorded information for 60+ minutes the signals where lost and the probe imploded from the pressure. It even recorded radio emissions of lightning and 330 mph wind, little water but no surface was detected in its 97 miles of decent.
Jupiter and the other gas giants as we know are enveloped in clouds so we can not see the surface from space but I wonder how the surface is like, could the hydrogen/He surface be like the surface of water where you can land a "boat" on or is it a thick haze or fog that transitions from the atmosphere to the main body with no definitive boundary? I think this is one of the great mysteries left in astronomy and in the solar system. What do you think it could be? I think it is probably the latter.
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Derico From Argentina, joined Dec 1999, 4233 posts, RR: 13 Reply 1, posted (5 months 1 week 3 days 1 hour ago) and read 1679 times:
There is no real surface to stand on. They are basically what their name suggest, "gas balls".
At a certain point, the pressure gets so intense that these gases are turned into a strange state called "metallic", and then "liquid-metallic". It is hard to depict since there is no equivalent on the Earth's surface.
Technically however, they do have terrestrial cores, or at least that is the consensus. But it is so far underneath all the gases that it is basically a moot point labelling the surface of the core as the real surface of the planet. You can't really ever reach that depth. But the theory is that these rocky cores were the gravitational initiators to attract the hydrogen/helium, etc that then formed the bulk of the outer planets.
The reason the inner planets didn't attract these gases is because they are too close to the sun, and the combination of the sun's heat making the hydrogen/helium to thermally excited so they easily escaped the gravity of planets like Mars, Earth, etc, and also the Solar wind pushing this stuff outwards.
I'm not really an astronomer so a few of my details may be wrong, but that is the general idea.
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type-rated From United States of America, joined Sep 1999, 4353 posts, RR: 20 Reply 2, posted (5 months 1 week 2 days 15 hours ago) and read 1570 times:
Your theory is pretty much spot on.
The U.S. & the Russians have send satellites to Jupiter and intentionally sent them down towards the "surface". The craft were crushed from the atmospheric pressure before any kind of "surface" was encountered. So all that exists is just a ball of pressurized gases.
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Airstud From United States of America, joined Nov 2000, 1859 posts, RR: 1 Reply 4, posted (5 months 1 week 2 days 6 hours ago) and read 1492 times:
I used to think the term "satellite" referred specifically to things that orbit, be they moons ("natural satellites") or man-made satellites for communimacations, meteorology, espionage n' stuff.
So I would growl whenever I heard people refer to non-orbiting space probes like Voyager and Mariner as "satellites."
Yet I am seeing that word used more and more by ostensibly space-knowledgeable folks when talking about these non-orbiting contraptions, such as Galileo.
Wha happened? Did the word get re-defined at some point? Or was my original info wrong in the first place?
rwessel From United States of America, joined Jan 2007, 1990 posts, RR: 2 Reply 5, posted (5 months 1 week 2 days ago) and read 1461 times:
Quoting Airstud (Reply 4): I used to think the term "satellite" referred specifically to things that orbit, be they moons ("natural satellites") or man-made satellites for communimacations, meteorology, espionage n' stuff.
So I would growl whenever I heard people refer to non-orbiting space probes like Voyager and Mariner as "satellites."
Yet I am seeing that word used more and more by ostensibly space-knowledgeable folks when talking about these non-orbiting contraptions, such as Galileo.
Wha happened? Did the word get re-defined at some point? Or was my original info wrong in the first place?
The usage is a bit loose - anything (unmanned) leaving Earth orbit is usually considered a space probe. And an artificial satellite is something we've put into orbit.
But Galileo orbited Jupiter, and (the now defunct) Mariner 9 continues to orbit Mars (Mariner 8 was supposed to do the same, but was lost at launch). And there are a number of others orbiting bodies other than Earth in the solar system. Certainly those are (or were) satellites of their respective destination planets. MRO, for example is an artificial satellite in an areocentric orbit, while Phobos and Deimos are natural satellites in an areocentric orbit. Plus we have a number of probes (functional or otherwise) orbiting the Sun (in heliocentric orbits), and even probes like Pioneer 10 and 11 or the Voyagers, which are on interstellar trajectories, are still orbiting the core of the galaxy.
So the usage is not strictly wrong, but the broad convention is definitely to use "space probe" rather than an unqualified "satellite" for things that have escaped from Earth.
And to complicate things further, you have the case of HGS1 back in 1998, which suffered a transfer stage failure, and was left stranded it its transfer orbit. There was enough fuel in the station keeping system to allow a kick around the moon the get it into a geosync orbit. Or take something at a Lagrange point (such as SOHO), which is to an extent orbiting two bodies simultaneously (of course that’s also true of any other satellite, for example ISS orbits the Sun as it orbits Earth, although that's secondary, as opposed to primary for something at one of the L-points). Or a hypothetical probe that leaves Earth orbit, and then returns (to an Earth orbit, rather than a direct reentry).
That inspired me to look up the names of other orbits (thought I do not see one for Pluto, even though it has a natural satellite)
Galactocentric orbit: An orbit about the center of a galaxy. The Sun follows this type of orbit about the galactic center of the Milky Way.[citation needed]
Heliocentric orbit: An orbit around the Sun. In our Solar System, all planets, comets, and asteroids are in such orbits, as are many artificial satellites and pieces of space debris. Moons by contrast are not in a heliocentric orbit but rather orbit their parent planet.
Geocentric orbit: An orbit around the planet Earth, such as the Moon or artificial satellites.
Areocentric orbit: An orbit around the planet Mars, such as moons or artificial satellites.
Lunar orbit (also selenocentric orbit): An orbit around the Earth's moon.
Hermocentric orbit: An orbit around the planet Mercury.
Aphrodiocentric orbit: An orbit around the planet Venus.
Jovicentric orbit (also zeocentric orbit): An orbit around the planet Jupiter.
Cronocentric orbit (also saturnocentric orbit): An orbit around the planet Saturn.
Uranocentric orbit: An orbit around the planet Uranus.
Neptunocentric orbit: An orbit around the planet Neptune.
Darksnowynight From United States of America, joined Jan 2012, 981 posts, RR: 1 Reply 11, posted (5 months 1 week 16 hours ago) and read 1259 times:
Quoting BN747 (Reply 10): Exploded in the atmosphere perhaps.
More or less. You can still have dramatic collisions with matter that is not solid. It's all about the relative velocities involved. Even a matchstick can ruin your day, if you hit it at 15,000/mph.
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connies4ever From Canada, joined Feb 2006, 3857 posts, RR: 13 Reply 15, posted (5 months 4 days 20 hours ago) and read 923 times:
Quoting Derico (Reply 1): At a certain point, the pressure gets so intense that these gases are turned into a strange state called "metallic", and then "liquid-metallic". It is hard to depict since there is no equivalent on the Earth's surface.
Yes, that's very much the current thinking. Saturn would be a little more benign than Jupiter, and Uranus & Neptune moreso still. Saturn, in fact, has an average density LESS than that of water. But I think another probe to Titan and possiblly Enceladus will occur sooner rather than later. There has been talk of a floating probe to Titan to explore the hydrocarbon lakes.
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