Acksblog

Jupiter GRS and
multiple zonal wind bands

A number of scientists have long harbored nagging doubts about the makeup of the ‘gas giants’, particularly Jupiter, but there has seemed to be no alternatives.  The latest attempt to address these doubts is a paper meant to show that the hypothetical large solid cores of these planets could be dissolving in their putative conductive hydrogen interior.  The authors base their theoretical calculations on temperatures of 20,000 K and pressures as high as 40 million atmospheres.  Given the myriad of problems with the ‘gas giant’ hypothesis stated below, these calculations are, to say the least, presumptuous.

Observations Counter to ‘Gas Giant’ Hypothesis

1. The Galileo atmospheric probe detection of high levels of Ar, Kr, and Xe

2. The heavy elements revealed by impacts of  Shoemaker-Levy 9 comets

3. The failure of the probe to detect Jupiter’s three touted cloud layers

4. The failure to produce the  ‘conductive’ state of hydrogen

5. The failure to explain Jupiter’s multiple zonal wind bands

6. The failure of the probe to detect what colors Jupiter’s atmosphere

7. The failure to explain the high pressure/density above the cloud-tops

8. Time required for the giant planet-forming core to form

Discussion

1. The high concentrations of heavy noble gases at the top of Jupiter’s atmosphere is important because the only way these could have been captured would have been by freezing below -240 C when the planet formed, because they do not chemically combine with any other elements.  However, the ‘gas giant’ hypothesis requires the planet’s interior to be very hot.

2. The larger Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet fragments produced very bright, sustained emissions, consequently called ‘main events’  that revealed the spectra of a number of heavy elements never before observed on Jupiter.  The main events occurred 6 to 9 minutes after the initial, much fainter precursors and several were brighter than the entire planet, saturating all of the sensors observing the event.  Three or four mathematical models were quickly ‘adjusted’ to produce a radiation-versus-time line as close as possible to the observed one,  but only after one well-known physicist ‘saved the day’ by suggesting why the brightest emission was delayed by such a long period.  His hypothesis was that the vaporized comet material shot back through the atmospheric entry channel sending a plume of material thirty times more massive than the comet itself high above the cloud-tops, which, although it extinguished quickly, fell ballistically back into the atmosphere, heating it to form the ‘main events’.  Only one physicist gave an honest appraisal of this hypothesis.  Gene Shoemaker called it “nonsense”.  Given this explanation, the products of a high altitude nuclear explosion would produce millions of times more damage than the bomb itself as they fell back into the atmosphere.  Scientists attribute the heavy element spectra to the contents of the incoming comet.

I suggest that the larger S-L 9 fragments passed entirely through the atmosphere, ~500 km deep, and impacted the solid Methane Gas Hydrate surface producing a large fusion explosion.   A great ‘mushroom’ cloud then rose, carrying the heavy elements released from the surface, which took 6 minutes to rise to the cloud tops and became visible to Earth-based and Galileo sensors for a sustained period

3. The notorious three cloud layers hypothesized to exist in Jupiter’s atmosphere – ammonia crystals, ammonium hydrosulfide, and a thick water cloud, in descending order, have long been postulated on the assumption that Jupiter is a gas giant.   Assuming the interior of the planet were hot, these compounds would rise and condense as they cooled to form the cloud layers.  However, the Galileo probe passed through the proposed level but found none of them.  In spite of this non-finding, every book on the planets dutifully includes the three cloud layers of Jupiter as gospel.

4. For decades, scientists have toiled in laboratories all over the world to produce the ‘conductive hydrogen’ state proposed in the ‘gas giant’ hypothesis, in order to comprehend their interiors, but no one ever has succeeded.  Thus another aspect of the currently accepted hypothesis remains unproven.  Researchers should spend time studying the equation of state of Methane Gas Hydrates.  This is already a well -studied material because of the potential for extracting methane from it on Earth, but it should be studied under the conditions of extremely high pressure and low temperature found within Jupiter.

5. No planetary  scientist has yet been able to construct a model that produces the multiple zonal wind bands shown in Figure 1.  It is a well understood fact that they can only exist if the atmosphere is bounded below by a solid surface.  Jupiter’s bands are similar to the easterlies and westerlies found in the Earth’s atmosphere, but there are many more and they have remained at the same latitudes for as long as mankind have observed the planet.

They require a constant source of energy.  The latitude of this energy source is easily determined from the observed wind speeds.  Surprisingly the fastest band is not at the equator, proving that the energy source is not the Sun, rather it is at 20 degrees south latitude – the same as the Great Red Spot, where the 6,000 year-old fusion furnace still burns in a large crater.

6. Planetary science has shown a cavalier attitude concerning the coloration of Jupiter’s atmosphere – as if it is not important.   The Galileo probe penetrated 97 km, well below the cloud-tops, but the data gave no hint of its source.   It is easily explained.  The coloration has been viewed for hundreds of years and because it exhibits no spectral lines, it is obviously due to the reflection of sunlight from solid refractory particles composed of heavy elements, floating high in the atmosphere.  The Galileo probe used a mass spectrometer to study gases in the atmosphere, which cannot ingest and certainly not analyze the chemical makeup of the dust particles.

The constant presence of these heavy elements requires an energy source that continually raises more to the top of the atmosphere.  The continual fusion reaction in a single large impact crater not only consumes and releases hydrogen, oxygen and methane from the MGH surface, but also the heavy elements which are encapsulated throughout this clathrate material.  These are carried aloft in the plume and condense and chemically combine (oxidize?) to form the refractory particles which color Jupiter’s atmosphere.  In fact, at the time of the original impact sufficient heavy element mass rebounded from Jupiter to produce proto-Venus.   Proto-Venus is  still too hot for the much more abundant water and other volatile elements ejected into the inner solar, to settle on its surface.

7. These heavy elements perform several other functions.  This is the trickster at work.  The mass of heavy elements suspended in the atmosphere form a heat-blanket which disguises the fact that the so-called ‘temperature excess’ is merely an atmospheric phenomenon which originates in one large crater, while the rest of the planet remains frozen solid Methane Gas Hydrates.

Additionally, the heat rising from the giant crater performs a function similar to the super-hot body of the newly created proto-Venus.  Both create mass-flow environments which result in inversions or gradients in the molecular species as a function of altitude that are not present in the well-mixed atmosphere of ancient quiescent planets like the Earth.  On Venus, the interior is so hot that it is jetting massive amounts of S8 gas upward at high speed from over 200,000 ‘small domes’, filling the lower atmosphere with S8 (and CS) and forming the lower cloud layer (S8 crystals).  In fact, it is that 50 km thick layer of heavy gases (the Hadesphere) which is responsible for the surface pressure of 91 atmospheres, and not carbon dioxide as currently believed.  This structure was missed by Pioneer Venus in a way similar to that by which the  refractory particles in Jupiter’s atmosphere went undetected.  In the Venus case, the mass spec did not have sufficient mass range to detect S8 gas.  But a major clue was present and was ignored, when the CO2 and CO channels dropped several orders of magnitude as the PV probe descended below 50 km.  Project scientists blamed the loss of CO2  & CO signals on the clogging of the mass spec input leak, and have never discovered to this day the complete domination of S8 in the lower atmosphere of Venus.

Although Jupiter is a frozen, solid MGH planet, the rising plume from the fusion reaction in the giant crater  is continually releasing heavy elements from the clathrate and carrying them to the top of the atmosphere.  This suspended mass of heavy elements is creating a high pressure  and/or density region.  The Galileo probe reported ‘higher than expected’ pressure in the upper layers of Jupiter, which has never been explained.  Quoting one site:

Http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/gll38.html

“During the probes high-speed, atmospheric entry phase, deceleration measurements high in the atmosphere showed atmospheric density to be much greater than expected”

This was due to the mass of heavy elements suspended in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere.

8. In the ‘gas giant’ hypothesis most of the heavy elements should initially be in the rocky-iron core of the planet because a very large core had to have formed in order to gravitationally capture and hold the vast amount of very light hydrogen gas.  The problem with this seemingly straight- forward scenario is that formation of the core at Jupiter’s orbital radius would take some 50 million years,  whereas studies of young similar-sized systems indicate that most of the hydrogen is lost in only a few million years.   This has led to several improbable ‘schemes’ designed to form the core more quickly in an attempt to save the ‘gas giants’, but most scientists have dismissed these ideas.

~ by Angiras on July 30, 2012.

Posted in astronomy, Astrophysics, paradigm shift, planetary science
Tags: Great Red Spot, Jupiter colors, zonal wind bands