Astronomers finally uncover the 40-year mystery of Jupiter’s epic Aurora X eruptions

For 40 years, the intense Polar aurora, also known as the Northern and Southern Lights, have intrigued astronomers around the world. Now scientists have finally uncovered the mystery behind the The gas giantthe epic X-ray flares.

Using the measures taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which orbiting Jupiter, and data from the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton Earth-Orbiting Mission, astronomers were able to see the whole phenomenon from start to finish in a way that they had never been able to see before.

In a recent study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers detail the process, which includes electrically charged ions, responsible for x-rays, “surfing” electromagnetic waves from the planet’s magnetic field into its atmosphere.

Of all the light shows detected at the poles of seven planets in our solar system, those of Jupiter are the most powerful and the only ones produced by a gas giant. While some auroras can be spotted with the naked eye, others come in the form of short wavelengths of light that can only be seen with certain telescopes.

Earthlings are familiar with the Northern Lights, but Jupiter’s version releases hundreds of gigawatts of energy, enough to briefly power all of humanity. These shorter emissions require a massive amount of energy to be produced, which has led scientists to wonder over the past four decades how Jupiter could generate them.

They knew the light shows were caused by ions entering Jupiterthe atmosphere of – but how did they get there?

The researchers found that pulsating auroras are triggered by regular fluctuations in the planet’s extremely strong magnetic field, which cause electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves (EMICs). The particles, guided by the magnetic field, “ride the wave” through millions of kilometers of space before crashing into the planet’s atmosphere, causing an aurora explosion every 27 minutes.

“What we see in the Juno data is this beautiful chain of events. We see the compression happening, we see the EMIC wave go on, we see the ions, and then we see a pulse of ions go off. move along the field line, ”he added. – Author William Dunn said in a press release. “Then, a few minutes later, XMM sees a burst of X-rays.”

A similar process produces the earth’s aurora.

“So it could be a universal phenomenon, present in many different environments in space,” Dunn said.

“Now that we have identified this fundamental process, there is a plethora of possibilities to study it next,” said co-lead author Dr Zhonghua Yao. “Similar processes are probably taking place around Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and probably exoplanets as well, with different types of charged particles ‘surfing’ the waves.”

It is not known why the magnetic field lines vibrate periodically, but they could be caused by interactions with solar wind or high speed plasma circulating in Jupiter’s very large magnetosphere. With Juno, astronomers now have the ability to go even further.

“X-rays are usually produced by extremely powerful and violent phenomena such as black holes and neutron stars, so it seems strange that simple planets produce them as well,” said co-author Graziella Branduardi-Raymont. “We can never visit black holes, because they are beyond space travel, but Jupiter is on our doorstep. With the arrival of the Juno satellite in Jupiter’s orbit, astronomers now have a fantastic opportunity to closely study an environment that produces x-rays. “