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Violent storms have broken out on Jupiter, and they are screwing up the beautiful white and brown belts of the planet.
The storms, which look like cumulonimbus anvils on Earth, blur the sharp lines separating the different atmospheric bands of Jupiter. In the same way that anvil-shaped thunderstorms form on the Earth, ammonia and water vapor towers rise through the outer layer of Jupiter's clouds before s & rsquo; Extend and condense in the form of white plumes that stand out against the surface of the clouds. Along the way, they create whirlwinds at the borders of different groups, disturbing them and mixing their whites and whites in whirlpools.
"If these plumes are vigorous and continue to have convective events, they could disrupt all of these bands over time, although it may take a few months," said Imke de Pater, astronomer of the University of California in Berkeley, in a statement. . (Convection is a process in which a denser, warmer fluid increases through a colder fluid.)
De Pater was the principal author of an article accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal, describing the observations of these disturbances with the help of the Atacama Large Molecular / Atacama (ALMA) network in Chile and the telescope. Hubble Space.
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Under normal circumstances, the researchers explained, the ammonia ice clouds make up the thin top layer of brown and white clouds visible like the planet's tapes that we usually have. see in spatial images. But this ammonia does not rise higher and does not penetrate much deeper into the atmosphere mainly composed of hydrogen and helium of the planet. This also makes it difficult to observe the bowels of the planet, making it difficult to understand the cause of these storms.
They are not, however, the first examples that astronomers have detected disturbances in the atmospheric bands of Jupiter. The researchers wrote that these events appeared to occur periodically, citing examples from the 1990s, many of which included lightning.
"We were very lucky with these data because they were captured just days after amateur astronomers discovered a bright plume in the South Equatorial Belt," said de Pater. "With ALMA, we watched the whole planet and saw this plume .. Since ALMA probed under the cloudy layers, we could see what was going on beneath the clouds of ammonia."
The researchers looked through the clouds to find that the plumes came from the depths of the gaseous giant's atmosphere. Warm pockets of ammonia and water grow together, reaching a point 80 km below the clouds where water condenses into droplets of liquid, releasing heat . This renewed energy propels ammonia through the outer clouds, where it can form white, anvil shaped plumes.
It is unclear to what extent these plumes will disrupt the largest planet in our solar system, but the researchers will certainly monitor them to see how all this will happen.
Originally published on Science live.
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