It is not in vain that Jupiter is called the “King of the Planets”. It is massive, really heavy, and now scientists believe it has eaten pieces from other planets to make it as big as it is.
That’s right, the gas giant, named after Greek and Roman gods, is thought to have swallowed a series of small “planetesimals” on its way to taking its place as the largest planet in the solar system.
The theory comes from an international team of astronomers led by Jamila Miguel of the Dutch Space Research Institute SRON and is set out in an article in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Following last year’s news, NASA scientists are puzzled by the discovery that the Big Red Spot on the planet is accelerating.
When NASA’s Juno space mission arrived in Jupiter in 2016, scientists saw the remarkable beauty of the fifth planet from the sun.
In addition to the famous Big Red Spot, Jupiter is littered with hurricanes, which almost gives it the look and mystique of a painting by Van Gogh.
But what lay beneath the outer layer was not immediately clear.
However, Juneau was able to measure variations in gravitational pull over different places on the planet’s surface, giving astronomers information about what was below.
What they found was not a homogeneous and well-mixed composition, but instead a higher concentration of “metals” – elements heavier than hydrogen and helium – towards the center of the planet.
The team of astronomers says that the most likely explanation is that Jupiter has swallowed the number of “planetesimals”, getting bigger and bigger.
Planetsimals are a class of bodies believed to have formed to form Earth and other planets after condensation from concentrations of diffuse matter at the beginning of the history of the solar system.
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