NASA has made a remarkable discovery on the planet Jupiter with the help of the Juno spacecraft, observing how winds penetrate the gas giant's atmosphere. These findings could provide new insights into Jupiter's mysterious and turbulent interior.
Since arriving in 2016 at our solar system's largest planet, Juno has had an overview of the violent activities in Jupiter's atmosphere. With about 55 flybys and equipped with a suite of science instruments, Juno managed to penetrate deep into the planet's atmosphere, providing detailed insight into Jupiter's inner processes.
Jovian gravity data collected by Juno showed scientists that these atmospheric winds move in a "cylindrical" fashion, parallel to the planet's axis of rotation. This discovery not only redefines our understanding of Jupiter, but is also relevant to all giant planets, both in our solar system and beyond.
The research team applied a mathematical technique previously used to model the gravitational variations and surface elevations of rocky planets like Earth to process the Juno data. This approach provided a resolution of Jupiter's winds four times greater than that obtained by the previous missions, Voyager and Galileo.
These measurements of Jupiter's gravity field align with 20-year-old models of the planet's strong east-west zonal flows, suggesting that winds extend downward from cloud level through the atmosphere. Moreover, these measurements support the idea that these zonal flows move inward in a cylindrical fashion, oriented along Jupiter's rotation axis.
With these new results, Juno resolved a debate that began in the 1970s about Jupiter's deep atmospheric winds and their structure. These discoveries not only expand our understanding of Jupiter, but also open up new research possibilities for understanding the planet and other gas giants.
