Jupiter's Atmosphere is Surprisingly Hot - by BrianKoberlein
Jupiter is a big planet, but it’s still a planet. That means it doesn’t heat itself through fancy mechanisms like nuclear fusion. Its interior is heated through its own weight, squeezing the interior through hydrostatic equilibrium, and its surface is heated mostly by the Sun. Since Jupiter only gets about 4% of the light per square meter that Earth gets, you’d expect its upper atmosphere to be pretty cold. Traditional models estimate it should be about -70 degrees Celsius.
In the words of Ruby Rhod from the movieWith such little sunlight reaching Jupiter, how can its atmosphere be so warm? The team found it has to do with Jupiter’s aurora. On Earth, we have aurora all the time. More popularly known as the northern lights, this glow of the upper atmosphere occurs when ions from the solar wind get caught in Earth’s magnetic field and strike our atmosphere at high speed.
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