Jupiter An Example

Fig. 1 Bright patches glow in Jupiter’s ultraviolet aurora observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: Sarah Badman (Lancaster University), NASA, ESA

Jupiter is an example of the current depth of knowledge of the planets in academia. The composition of the most obvious, visible feature, the varied colored clouds that surround the planet remains unknown. The darker ones have been classified as ‘bands’ and the lighter as ‘zones’, but after thirty years of probes no elements have been measured. The gravity system has not found the heavy solid core which attracted all of that gas. Neither has any scientist produced the high pressure electrically conductive hydrogen state thought to compose the interior. The cause of the permanent auroral ovals has never been measured descending to the poles nor has the excess temperature or the equatorial ‘lump’ in the magnetosphere. The composition of the “inner radiation belt” has not been identified, merely evaded. Lighter clouds are assumed to be frozen ammonia, because they cannot be identified, but this is just a guess. This is reminiscent of the ‘classification’ of giant planets as gaseous. Articles keep telling us how much we are learning about Jupiter, i.e. the data is piling up but its time to look at it from a new perspective.