NASA has just announced that the spacecraft Juno has again observed “Superbolts” of lightning in the atmosphere of Jupiter. And while lightning on the jumbo planet is not new, this latest observation may help answer big questions. Big questions like: Why is there such a funky distribution of ammonia in the atmosphere of the Gas Giant?
In an announcement that comes through Science News, NASA outlined the recent observations of the Jovian lightning, which were collected by Juno. Juno is a NASA space probe that killed Jupiter, collecting data and making images like this.
“Juno’s narrow flybys of the cloud heads showed us something surprising – smaller, shallow flashes [of lightning] “originated at much higher altitudes in Jupiter’s atmosphere than previously thought possible,” said Heidi Becker, Juno’s Radiation Monitoring Research Director at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Becker was the lead author of a recent study based on Juno’s findings published in Nature.
To prevent these superbolts of lightning – which are up to 1,000 times as powerful as lightning on Earth – at those higher altitudes, there must be some way to keep water in its liquid state. And that’s where ammonia, a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen, enters the picture.
Unlike Earth’s weather system, which is driven by water, Jupiter’s is powered by both water and ammonia. Because of all the ammonia in Jupiter’s atmosphere, water can reach much higher altitudes before freezing. This in turn causes the formation of the superbolts at high altitudes, despite ambient temperatures of -126 ° F.
“At these altitudes, ammonia acts as an antifreeze, lowering the melting point of water ice and allowing the formation of a cloud with ammonia-water liquid,” Becker said in the NASA announcement. “In this new state, falling drops of ammonia-water liquid can collide with the rising water-ice crystals and electrify the clouds,” she added.
But this theory not only explains how the superbolts form. It also explains why Juno discovered “pockets of missing ammonia” in Jupiter’s atmosphere. This is because Becker and her colleagues theorize that hail develops at the same high altitudes as the superbolts, and then falls deep into the lower atmosphere. The ammonia is in turn trapped in the hail – described as “Windex snow cones” by Becker – where it is made invisible to Juno’s sensors.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / CNRS
“[L]Attention to Jupiter does not happen in the same way as on Earth, ”Becker says in the video above. She adds that this kind of lightning “is very exotic and very different from what we have here on earth and that is what is most exciting to me.”
What do you think about these superbolts of lightning in the atmosphere of Jupiter? And why does “Windex snow cone” sound like it could be a real thing in 2020? Electrify us with your thoughts in the comments, folks!
Feature Image: Paul Anglada
