It has such a massive hydrogen atmosphere that the temperatures and pressures turn it into a metallic plasma below a certain depth (in literature referred to as the “Plasma Phase Transition”), and that plasma dissolved/ate the planet.
This metallic hydrogen plasma is basically indistinguishable from that found in stars. In fact, Jupiter is a Y-class brown dwarf star because of this morphology.
This doesn’t seem to be the case, at least according to the brown dwarf wikipedia page which seems to use Jupiter as the yardstick for what isn’t a brown dwarf.
Not by my ctrl-f “Jupiter” on that page.
Jupiter is, however, the top of the list on wikipedia’s page for Y-type brown dwarfs.
This is a list of astronomical objects with the spectral type Y. They are a mix of brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects.
Spectral type Y objects are not all brown dwarfs, they just have a similar elemental composition. Jupiter doesn’t have the mass to be considered a brown dwarf, they are 13-80 times the mass of Jupiter by definition.
See that also seems to be using it as a point of reference? It labels it a “Y-class analog”, and every other entry on the list is much heavier and hotter. I’m just not sure.
Still no, from the first sentence of your article
This is a list of astronomical objects with the spectral type Y. They are a mix of brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects.
That’s a fuzzy number based on perspective.
Geologists usually argue for a morphology-based definition of planet over the current IAU dynamics-based one. The definitions that I’m presenting are an extension of the geological/morphological framing. This reflects my background as a planetary scientist vs an astrophysicist.
Dynamicists and astrophysicists still tend to prefer the existing definitions. They are concerned about angular momentum budgets, orbital dynamics, and interstellar consequences. To them, Jupiter isn’t a star because it isn’t hot enough to impact interstellar space and it isn’t massive enough to cause the sun to do much more than wobble. On a galactic scale, Jupiter doesn’t matter compared to the sun. To them, Pluto isn’t a planet because it’s too tiny and part of a larger debris cloud that damps its dynamical influence on the solar system. They are concerned with bigger things, and prefer to downgrade classifications to justify neglecting the influences of smaller bodies to make their math easier and less compute intensive. I want to be clear that this is still a valid and justifiable approach.
Geologists tend to prefer classifying objects based on what they are on the inside. Astrophysicists tend to prefer classifying objects based on their interactions in a larger system. As a result, geologists still usually refer to Pluto as a planet, and astrophysicists still usually refer to Jupiter as a planet.
“How many planets are in the solar system” is a question with a subjective answer based on your perspective, the story you’re trying to tell, and the problem you are trying to solve.
So there is a solid-ish core it’s just liquid plasma?
For all my youth I fantasized about what is under Jupiter’s clouds and always imagined it was a very dense metal.
Ah article answered me in another thread. This is what they wrote:
It’s more of a diffuse sludgeball of a core getting dissolved within the plasma. See figure 2 in this paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ac7ec8
These are current best fit models to the data which are still coming in from Juno. This new paradigm is our best understanding yet, but like anything in science, is capable of being overturned by later experiments and new data.
There is a lot more that we don’t know about Jupiter than we do know.
So what would happen if you fell
First death is friction heat as you enter the atmosphere. Avoid it with a heat resistant vehicle or suit.
Next death is from extreme vibrations from the turbulence caused by supersonic winds. Avoid it with an aerodynamic and strong vehicle body that can withstand and stabilize in incredibly high winds.
Next death is lack of oxygen. But you probably have some oxygen system on that vehicle anyway just to get there.
Next is the freezing temperatures, around -145 C. Ok add some heating to your craft.
Next is the crushing pressure, passing 1000x earth’s atmospheric pressure and it just gets higher from there. Hope you didn’t use carbon fibre for your vehicle’s main structural integrity!
Then, if you’re not crushed anyways despite whatever you used to mitigate the previous one failing, there’s extreme heat to deal with again, just more of it this time. No known substance can withstand the heat, especially considering the pressure is still just increasing.
Further down is the metallic hydrogen layer. Assuming you haven’t already been converted to plasma, you probably will at this point.
And further down is the core that includes “rock” but I use the term pretty loosely.
Some of your atoms might eventually make it there but will likely spend a long time just blowing around in the atmosphere after they were vaporized.
Massive, passive ball
I don’t get it, is this some kind of ✨g a y✨ joke that I’m too straight to understand?
NOOOO IT WASNT!!!
Its moons are clearly made of carbo based substances!!!
I’ve heard a theory that there’s solid metallic hydrogen at the core from the absolutely immense pressure, but it hasn’t been confirmed.
Jupiter would have certainly had countless rocky, icy, and any other category of asteroid fall into it over the last several billions of years, so it’s not all hydrogen.
And I’m not sure if solid is the right word. It’s denser than solids we’re used to, but it’s not necessarily making any bonds between nearby atoms, so they might flow to some degree.
Though even if is solid at some point, it won’t necessarily be a sudden change from gas to solid or even gas to liquid to solid. The pressure is so high it might be more of a gradient than a surface like we’re used to here.
Here’s what I was taking about. The idea is under the right temps and pressures you’d get a lattice of single hydrogen atoms instead of hydrogen atom pairs. It could potentially be meta stable after being produced, but that’s still to be determined.
