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NASA's Juno spacecraft has mapped Jupiter's powerful magnetic field, revealing a surprising asymmetry between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere.
Jupiter is home to the most powerful magnetic field of all the planets in our solar system, creating a field nearly 20,000 times more powerful than Earth's. Juno has braved this magnetic field during approaches near the probe since his arrival in July 2016; it travels about 4,000 kilometers above the planet every 53 days in elongated orbits.
A new article, published Wednesday (September 5) in the journal Nature, brings together Juno's measurements to create the most detailed map of the Jovian magnetic field at different depths, painting a complex picture. [‘Totally Wrong’ on Jupiter: What Scientists Gleaned from NASA’s Juno Mission]
An illustration of a standard magnetic field at Jupiter – with magnetic field lines extending from near its North Pole up to its South Pole. New measurements of NASA's Juno spacecraft suggest that the field is much more complicated than that. Credit: NASA / JPL / SWRI
"We find that Jupiter's magnetic field is different from any other known planetary magnetic field," wrote the authors, led by Kimberly Moore of Harvard University. Like the Earth, the magnetic field of Jupiter has a north and south primary pole, close to the real poles of the planet during its rotation. But while the gas giant's south pole is relatively orderly, the planet's north pole has a narrow magnetic hot spot amidst more chaotic magnetic field zones, where positive and negative sections have no counterparts. concrete. And the planet has another big magnetic "south pole" close to the equator. Researchers call this equatorial patch "a big blue spot" in their paper, unlike the swirling storm of the planet. (Blue is often used in diagrams to indicate the negative part of a magnetic field.)
According to a column News and Views accompanying the article, Jupiter's magnetic field is probably generated by a swirling mass of hydrogen in the planet. Crushed at incredible pressure, this material becomes a metallic liquid capable of driving electricity and generating a magnetic field when it is agitated. The heat inside the planet, resulting from the formation of Jupiter at the beginning of the solar system's history, creates convection currents that move the liquid, not to mention the gases that lead to the clouds. And storms.
Convection in the iron core of the Earth also generates the magnetic field of our planet, but the Earth's field is much simpler: mostly positive at one pole, mostly negative at the other.
New data from NASA's Juno spacecraft to Jupiter reveals a more chaotic magnetic field around the gaseous giant than expected, including a "blue dot" of magnetic south near the planet's equator.
Credit: Bloxham, Jeremy; Moore, Kimberly (2018) / Figshare (CC BY 4.0)
This strange magnetic field on Jupiter is a clue to what's happening inside the planet. According to the News and Views story, the researchers suggest that the Jovian core could be larger and more diluted than expected, or that Jupiter's stable layers could separate parts of the planet's interior, altering the flow. The state of the planet's field could even, even though the newspaper researchers suggest that this is unlikely, mark the middle of a magnetic field reversal process.
By modeling the different possible scenarios within Jupiter and the magnetic fields they would generate, the researchers indicated that researchers can search for a match with the planet's actual magnetic field to determine what is happening.
Email Sarah Lewin at [email protected] or follow her @SarahExplains. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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