How big is Jupiter? Astronomers now think it ‘eats’ parts of other planets | Science & Technology News
They don’t call Jupiter “King of the Planets” for nothing. It was huge, really heavy, and now scientists think it ate parts of other planets to get to its current size.
That’s right, the gas giant named after the Greek and Roman gods is said to have absorbed a series of small “planets” on its way to asserting its place as the largest planet in the solar system. .
The theory comes from an international team of astronomers led by Yamila Miguel from the Netherlands SRON Institute for Space Research and is posited at an article in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
After last year’s news that NASA scientists were baffled to discover that the planet of Great Red Spot is accelerating.
When NASA’s Juno space mission reached Jupiter in 2016, scientists caught sight of the remarkable beauty of the fifth planet from the sun.
Besides the famous Great Red Spot, Jupiter It turned out to be littered with storms, almost giving it the look and mystique of a Van Gogh painting.
But what lies beneath the outer layer is not immediately clear.
However, Juno was able to measure variations in gravity across different locations on the planet’s surface, providing astronomers with information about what lies beneath.
What they found was not a homogeneous and well-mixed composition, but instead a higher concentration of “metals” – elements heavier than hydrogen and helium – towards the center of the planet.
The team of astronomers says the most likely explanation is that Jupiter has absorbed a larger and larger number of “planets”.
Planets are one of a class of objects thought to have coalesced to form Earth and other planets after condensing from concentrations of diffuse matter early in the solar system’s history.
