Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What's In Jupiter's Great Red Spot?

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What's In Jupiter's Great Red Spot? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, or sometimes I like to think about what it
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: would be like to get a visit from future scientists
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: who come with like answers to some of our biggest questions.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I mean like how did the universe form?
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Or how big is it? Or who's going to be president?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I want to know the answer to those questions,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: and I expect them to have it. But sometimes that
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: makes me kind of nervous. Nervous. Why do you feel nervous,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: because then I feel pressure. I imagine like if I
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: went to visit ancient scientists, then I'd be on the
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: spot to answer their questions about the universe. Is that
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: like a physics professor's recurring nightmare going up against a
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: rout full of people and not having the answer to
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: something that's right, I'm talking to Plato and I'm wearing
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: nothing under my toga Um. Yeah exactly. But but the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: reason I worry about is that sometimes I feel like
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: we still don't have answers to some of their questions.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: You mean, like simple questions that maybe they had back then.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: You feel like we still don't even know the answer
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: to them. Yeah, Like if you could go talk to Galileo,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: you know, who looked at the moons of Jupiter. I'm
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: sure he would have a lot of questions about their
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: solar system, and some of them we have answers to,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: and some of them are still open questions. That's a
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: bit embarrassing. Yeah, I think I know what you mean
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: of heard that there is a big mystery right here
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: in our solar system that is literally staring at us.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: That's right. We don't have an answer to We stare
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: in it and it stares back. Hi am forhand and
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I'm Daniel, and welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio where
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: we think about how to answer question into the universe,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: questions in the future, questions in the past, questions from today,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: questions from tomorrow, any questions you have about the universe.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: We are here to explain the answers to you. That's right.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: In this program, we talked about the big questions and
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the little questions, and the big isar questions, that's right.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: We talked about the calm questions and the stormy questions,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the red hot, red hot, burning questions people have. That's right.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: But this is not a podcast about stormy Daniels. Now
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: this is a podcast about other kinds of storms, that's right. Yeah.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: So to the end of program, we thought we would
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: tackle a question that was discovered a long time ago
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: by scientists, but for which we still don't have an answer.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: That's right, an open question people are still wondering about.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: We might not get an answer today, might not tomorrow,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: might be another hundred years before we figure this one out. Yeah,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: but hopefully we'll find the answer before it shrinks to nothing.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: That's right. And this one really does hearken back to
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: folks Galileo who first peered through their telescopes and looked
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: out at the sky and studied Jupiter. And when they
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: looked at Jupiter, they saw something pretty strange. They saw
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: that Jupiter was staring back at them. That's right. If
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: you've looked through a telescope, then you've noticed that Jupiter
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: has a big spot on it, right. Yeah. But of
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: course people have been thinking about this and wondering about
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: this for generations. It's not a new question, right. And
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: we received this question actually from one of our younger
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: listeners just the other day. So to introduce you to
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: today's topic, here's Judah Hi, my Nami Judah. I'm from
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles, California, and I really enjoy listen to your podcast,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and I have a question. My question is how did
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Jupiter's eye form to other planets have eyes? That's right,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: the Great Red Spot of Jupiter one of the most
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: prominent feature is on any object in the Solar System,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: and we still don't really know what it's all about.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Mm hm. That's an interesting way to categorize it. It's
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: like to be the biggest feature ever or right, It's
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: like a it's a good thing on a thing, but
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: it's so big that it's the biggest feature on anything
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: that we know about. That's right. That makes it it's
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: it's not even a thing in itself. Right, it's a
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: thing on another thing, and it's still huge, and it's
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: still a mystery. And to give people a sense of
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: the scale, you know, the Great Red Spot in Jupiter
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: is like one or two times the size of the
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: entire Earth. Right, this is not like a little detail
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: on some other planet. We're not talking about a rock
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: on the Moon or something. We're talking about a huge
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: astronomical feature. When we have you guys, do a quick
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: image Google search for the eye of Jupiter, and so
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: you get a sort of a better sense of what
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: we're talking about, that's right, Or if you don't have
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: the Internet handy, you just use your mind's eye and
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: remember what it looks like. Imagine what Jupiter looks like.
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  Speaker 1: It's got all these bands across it, a little swirling
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  Speaker 1: dots in it, but then on the southern part of it,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: the bottom half of it, it's got this big red spot.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: And imagine that you're an astronomer. You're one of the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: first people who look at Jupiter. Of course you're gonna wonder, like,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: what's that? Right? What is that thing? What's going on there?
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Is that made artificially? Is it natural? How could it
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: be natural? What could it be? There's so many questions
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: inspired by this one astronomical feature. And the thing that
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I love about it is that we still don't know
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: that it's still, you know, staring back at us and
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: resisting all of our efforts to understand it. Right, Yeah,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: because it's a it's kind of an eyesore, I mean
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: to plunts aside. The whole planet is sort of like
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: beige and brown, but then it has this ginormous really
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: red like not a little red, but like pretty red
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: giant spot. It's so you don't like it. You think
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Jupiter should wear makeup. It's like a big ZiT on
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: the face of Jupiter. Maybe that's what it is. I
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: have Jupiter. Maybe Jupiter is a teenager, right, and it's
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: so embarrassed and it doesn't want to talk about it,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: and now it's mad at Jupiter and one day it's
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: gonna pop. It's gonna pop. No, I think it's gorgeous.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: I love the patterns and the swirls. I mean, imagine
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: if Jupiter was just like blank, you know, it's just
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: like one big sort of gray mush, you know, it
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: would be so boring. I love the texture and the features.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: And Jupiter is fascinating because it inspires all these questions
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: and it's an opportunity to learn and and just aesthetically,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I think it looks pretty cool. I think you should
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: have more spots on yourself or hey, how do you know?
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I guess what I mean. It's
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: it's like a very defined feature, you know what I mean.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: It's like not a diffuse, you know, like um spot.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: It's not like a you know, like somebody spray painted
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and it's fuzzy on the size. It's like a has
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: a border and an edge, and it's in a very
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: sharp red You're you're exactly like there's real contrast there
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: between the red spot and the stuff immediately next to it, right,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: So it's it's definitely its own thing, right and that
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: that and that raises a lot of questions right there. Well,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: and you're saying it's the size of two earths, like
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: you could fit two of our planets in that spot. Yeah,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: And if you ever wanted to feel small and insignificant,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: you know, are your tiny compared to our planet? And
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: our planet is tiny compared to just features on other planets,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: you know, not even other planets, just like stuff on
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: those planets. So there are pimples and other planets that
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: are bigger than our planets, that's what you're saying. That's right. Um,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know what what happened when you pop an
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Earth size pimple. Um, Please don't don't imagine that, folks.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: But yeah, exactly, it's amazing the skill, right, Like just
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: to go across this giant spot would be akin to
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: flying around the world, right, Yeah, exactly, Um, exactly, it's
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: huge and it's sort of got its own like um patterns,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: you know, it itself. It rotates around Jupiter. It takes
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: six days to go around Jupiter. The spot itself moves
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: around what it moves Yeah, well it's spins, right, It rotates,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and then the spot itself moves around Jupiter. Jupiter has
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: all these bands of gas are flowing in different directions,
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  Speaker 1: and this spot goes around Jupiter. Takes about six earth
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  Speaker 1: days to make one transit, so it's not tied to
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  Speaker 1: the to those hard surface of Jupiter. It's like a
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: floating spot. Well, we can get into that, but we
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: don't actually know that much about what's under the red
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: spot and how deep it goes and it's connection to
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: what's underneath that. A lot of that is a mystery
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: because Jupiter is a hot and wet and nasty place
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: and pretty difficult to study. Wow, all right, let's get
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: into it. But first, as usual, we were wondering how
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: many people out there knew the answer or thought they
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: had the answer to the question what's in Jupiter's red spot? Yeah,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: so I walked around the campus if you see Irvine,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: and I asked them what they knew about Jupiter's red spot.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: So think about it for a second and and think about, well,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: how would you answer a random physics professors stopping in
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the middle of the street ask the what is in
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Jupiter's Red spot? Yeah? You would you take out your
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: pepper spray, would pull out your taser? Or would you
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: answer his questions? Do you take out your physics reference book?
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: That's right? That's right. So here's what folks on the E. C.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I campus had to say. What is in the Great
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  Speaker 1: Red Spot of Jupiter? What's going on there in the
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Great Red Spot of Jupiter? Oh? Something hot? Say it's
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: nasty and wet, No, but definitely hot. Yeah, um, I
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: have no Okay, probably some like plasma reactions. I don't know,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: something something at like high temperature and like high freshure. Okay.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Isn't a tornado of some sorts, that's right, Yeah, a
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: very big one. Okay. No, I don't know. Okay, No,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: I haven't looked into that. Okay. I think I've heard
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  Speaker 1: some things about how there's storms going on in there
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  Speaker 1: that might be causing that. It's like a storm of
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: some sort, right, like a like a never ending storm
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: or as far as we know, because it's been there
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: for a very long time, Um, and I think that's all.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not quite sure that refers to but
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: it might just be like I know that there are
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: large dust storms on Jupiter. That might be to what
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: you're referring. And I understand the question, correct, rain, it
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: might be something like a gigantic supercell that's been raging
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: for many years on Jupiter and little Ridge for many
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: years in the future. All Right, some not safe for
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: work as is here. Let's just say there's a broad
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: variety of responses. Yeah, nobody said pimple. Though nobody called
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: it the ZiT on the face of Jupiter. I think
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: your theory is in trouble there, man. But no, I mean,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: some people said it was something hot. I wonder what
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: they were thinking. Yeah, And another common theme is people
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: thinking of it is a storm like a dust storm, right.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I think they're imagining they're like the red sand on
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Mars or something like that. Um, but a storm is
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: on the right track, right. It's definitely a huge swirling
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: mass of gas like a hurricane, right, very high winds,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: and so a storm is is not a terrible answer.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: A storm is pretty is a pretty good way to
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: describe it. Okay, So there's a general understanding out there
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: that it's kind of like a weather phenomenon or it's um.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: It's swirling. It's not like, it's not that the rock
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: is painted red under there, that's right. Yeah, it's not
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: a huge piece of art on the on the surface
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: of Jupiter or anything. It's um. Yeah. I think people
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: are familiar with the fact that Jupiter is a gas planet, right,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: So we're not looking at the surface in the same
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: way that we look at the surface of Mars. When
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: we look at Jupiter, there isn't the surface there for
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: us to see. We're looking at sort of the top
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: of the Jovian atmosphere, and what we're seeing is a
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: big swirling mass. And so I think it's thinking about
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: his weather is is a good way to think about it. Alright,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: So let's let's start with some basics. Well, let's talk
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: about Jupiter and what that planet is like. Yeah, so
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: let's start from the inside out right, So, and compared
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: to Earth, Earth, as we know, is like a big
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: rocky ball with hot, nasty stuff on the inside and
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: then a very thin atmosphere surrounding it, Jupiter is really
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: pretty different. It has a rocky, icy core. We think
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: but it's pretty small, and it's mostly a huge ball
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: of hydrogen, and the hydrogen is under such pressure from
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: all the gravity from Jupiter being so massive that the
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: hydrogen is not like the hydrogen you imagine, like the
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: big tank of gas or something. Most of Jupiter is
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: this huge ball of metallic hydrogen, right, hydrogen that's been
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: squeezed and so much that it's turned into a metal.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: And then on top of that you have a liquid
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: hydrogen ocean. Right, And this is not something you ever
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: wanted to put a swimsuit on and dive into and
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: be a little chili. No, I think it'd be really hot. Actually,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I think it's a it's liquid and it's under high
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: pressure and temperature, so it's a it's a pretty crazy
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: place to be, but not nasty and wet. That's subjective,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: so I'll defer that to the first person to actually
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: swim in the oceans of Jupiter. And then on top
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: of that liquid ocean, you have gaseous hydrogen. You have
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: just like hydrogen that we're more familiar with. And then
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: on top of that you have clouds that are like
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: maybe thirty miles deep. So it's so it's like a
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: layer cake of different flavors of hydrogen. Like the more
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: compressive gets it, it actually first turns liquid and then
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: it actually turns into like solid hydrogen. Is that what
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: you're saying that it actually forms like a solid hydrogen
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: like a block of hydrogen. Wow, not exactly. It is metallic,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: but it's probably still liquid. It's not so much pressure
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: that it becomes a solid. Layer cake is a good example,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: because the stuff on the bottom gets squeezed by all
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: this stuff on the top. So this is a layer
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: cake with like a gazillion tons of frosting, so that
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: the bottom layer has become like squished. Is no longer
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: fluffy at all? Right, it's poll from the British Baking
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Show would say, it's like it's underbaked. But then, how
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: how big is that solid core in the middle, Like,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: is it it's still pretty big or is it bigger
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: than the Earth? It's a it's a little bit bigger
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: than the Earth. It's about the same scale as the Earth. Um.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: The biggest fraction of of Jupiter is definitely that metallic
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: hydrogen part. Oh wow, So really at the core Jupiter
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: is kind like about the size of Earth. It just
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: has a lot of icing on it exactly. Yeah, m
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: millions of Earth's worth of icing exactly. That is a
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: huge tub of icing, of cosmic galactic icing exactly. But
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the surface, at the very surface that we see, that's
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: all clouds. Yeah, And I wouldn't even call it a surface.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: You know, we're seeing the tops of the clouds and
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: it's not a surface because you can't like land on it.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: You know, you could descend into it. And we once
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: did drop a probe into Jupiter, but it got melted
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: and crushed before it even got down through the cloud layer.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, just from the craziness of that. Those clouds. Yeah,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: even just those clouds are very high temperature and pressure. Well,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: but but that cloud layer you're telling me is about
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: thirty miles deep, yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of clouds.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, Jupiter is just massive on this scale. It's
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: even hard to imagine, like when you think about planets,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: and so it's it's a huge pile of clouds. There's
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of stuff going on there. And you know,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: when you think about web there, right, whether is something
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: that happens in the atmosphere, right, because you have these
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: gas moving around, interacting and thirty miles deep of clouds
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: means you can have lots and lots of layers. You know,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: here on Earth we have like weather in the upper atmosphere,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: in the lower atmosphere, right, Jupiter has so much more
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: atmosphere and clouds than we do that there could be
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: complexities there that we've never seen, that we've never imagined.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: And that's one of the fascinating things about studying Jupiter
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: is it might give us a clue as to bigger
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: questions about whether or what weather might be like on
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: exoplanets and other solar systems we hope to one day
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: have our children live on. So it's a pretty important
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: place to to study how these things work because our
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: only experience of weather is here on Earth, and if
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: we think about it, we just have this tiny little
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: layer of gas too. To understand how all these things
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: swirl around and how they get affected by the Sun
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: and the Earth spinning rights, it's um. We have a
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: very small sample to understand, whether exactly and um. And
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: so that's why they send satellites up to study the
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: atmosphere Jupiter and the weather inside Jupiter and know even
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the storm aside. Even if Jupiter didn't have the great
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: red Spot. It would already be a place of crazy weather.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Like there are lightning strikes on Jupiter that are more
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: than a thousand times larger, like more energetic than lightning
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: strikes on Earth. You know, imagine like a thousand lightning
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: strikes simultaneously, all in the same place. That's like everyday
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: occurrence on Jupiter. You mean, like a like a single
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: bolt of lightning, and Jupiter is about a thousand times
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: more powerful in a lightning strike on Earth. Yeah, exactly.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: It's like everything on Jupiter is more dramatic. You know,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: I bet birthday parties in Jupiter are much more impressive
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: than birthday parties are well apparently Zit's are also very
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: much more I bet their jokes are funny, you know,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: they're probably much more jovial. Um. Okay, So so that
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: so things are more extreme because it's so so much
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: atmosphere so thicker, so much thicker, hotter and crazier. Um.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: And so that's kind of the picture of Jupiter. It's
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: like a little tiny rock core about the size of
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: our planet. But then you have all of those hydrogen
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: swirling around, swishing around. That's mostly what the planet is.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: It's it's like a giant gas container swirling round. Yeah, exactly.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: And and remember that most of the stuff in the
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Solar system is hydrogen, because that's the simplest element. It's
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: most of the stuff in the universe for the same
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: reason it's just a proton with the electron around it
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: a right. The Sun is mostly hydrogen for that same
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: reasons that Jupiter's mostly hydrogen. It's just most of the
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: stuff around. The basic building block was hydrogen, so that's
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: why it's hydrogen. And Jupiter is sort of like a
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: star that never got started burning, which is why I
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: can't fuse to make heavier stuff. But the thing that's
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: interesting to me is that, you know how we have
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: weather patterns on Earth, like we have the jet stream
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: and you know these various winds that are sort of
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: basically stable. The same kind of stuff happens on Jupiter.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: And you can see it with your own eyes. If
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: you look at the surface of Jupiter, you see these bands, right, Like,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Jupiter is not just one big blob. It has these
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: bands on it. And these bands are basically just like
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: wind patterns, and they go one way or they go
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: the other way. There's like these you know, centuries long
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: stable weather patterns on the surface of Jupiter. That's really
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: pretty fascinating because the whole thing is rotating, right, Like,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: it's not just a ball floating out in space. It's
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: spinning as well, isn't it. Yeah, exactly, it's definitely spinning.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: And something we don't know very well. It's like, how
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: are the various parts spinning? You know, the atmosphere is spinning,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the ocean is spinning, the core underneath it is spinning.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: We have a sense for what's in there from various
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: gravitational measurements, but we've never gone in there, so it's
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: hard to measure like how fast these things are moving.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: We have some clues from like the magnetic field information,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: but so one thing we don't know is how fast
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: these things are rotating relative to each other. You know,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Like we talked once about one of these moons could
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: have an outer ice shell that's rotating faster than the
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: inner core under the under the ocean. The same thing
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: could be happening in Jupiter. So there's a lot we
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: don't know about what's going on inside Jupiter. Inside, Like
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: if you just measured how the clouds moved on Earth,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: you might get a totally for an idea of how
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: the Earth is actually rotating. Yeah, although Earth is not
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: covered in clouds the way Jupiter is, so you can
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: actually see the surface and you can measure, you can
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: spot something on the surface of the Earth and watch
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: it go by every twenty four hours. You can't do
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: that on Jupiter. You can't see the core of Jupiter
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: or this liquid ocean um. Like I said, we dropped
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: some probes and but they didn't even make it all
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: the way down before they got like melted and crushed,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and like Jupiter just like laughs away are pathetic attempts
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: to study it swatted it away like exactly. And so
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: the most interesting feature on the surface of Jupiter, of course,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: is this great red spot, right and by now we've
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: studied it fairly extensively. You can see it from telescopes
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: on Earth, and we've sent this whole series of probes
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: that go by Jupiter, Pioneer Voyager, Cassini, New Horizons, Galileo
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: and most recently the Juno probe, and they've taken really
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: amazing pictures of this. So you can tell that the
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Great Red Spot is basically a huge storm. Wow, let's
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: jump right into the eye of the storm. But first
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Alright, So Jupiter is just
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: a basically a giant ball of hydrogen in all kinds
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: of states, solid liquid gas, clouds, and the eye of Jupiter.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: You're saying, it's just basically like a storm inside of
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: that giant weather ball. Yeah, exactly. It's basically a huge hurricane.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: And you know, on Earth you can have big hurricanes
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: that are hundreds of miles wide. That's a pretty amazing event.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: It's pretty rare, and you can get wind speeds up
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: to you know, a hundred hundred fifties sometimes in super
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: rare events up to like two hundred miles. Well, the
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Great Red Spot has winds that go up to four
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: hundred miles per hour. And it's been going on for
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: you know, we don't know exactly how long, but much
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: more than a hundred years. Wait, you mean it hasn't
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: always been there, Like there was a time when you
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: could look at Jupiter and you wouldn't see a red spot. Well,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: this is actually fascinating because we don't really have reliable information.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: The earliest solid observation of the Great Red Spot in
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Jupiter comes from like the eighteen thirties. Before that, there
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: are some folks Galileo and those guys who wrote about
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Jupiter and said, oh, I see a spot on Jupiter.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: But they weren't like really very detailed observations. They didn't
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: like tell us exactly what they saw and measured it
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: in stuff. And there's some hints in those writings that
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: suggests they might have seen a different spot, like on
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: the northern side of Jupiter. So it might be that
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the Jupiter's red spot is like a couple hundred years old,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: or it could be that it's been there for thousands
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: of years. We just don't have like a lot of data,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: right Is it a birthmark or is it something that
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: happened in purity? You know, like it could be that
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: we go back to talk to Galileo or folks like
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: that and they don't even have this question because they've
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: never seen the Great Red Spot in Jupiter and they're like,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: what do you talking about? Or it could be that
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: this has been around for our thousands of years and
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: and you know, it's a big question in their minds
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: as well. So it's it's sort of cool that we
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: don't know if this is like a transient thing that
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: exists only in these few decades and hundreds of years
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: that we're looking at Jupiter, or if it's a prominent feature.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: That's a cool thing about thinking about that sort of
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: time scales of the Solar system, you know, like in
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a million years, will Saturn still have rings? Will Jupiter
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: be identifiable? You know, this kind of thing. But that's
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: like their signature move, you know, that's like there, it's
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: in their logo, you know exactly. Well, if you're like
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: a teenager who had a lot of acne, that might
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: have been your signature, but then you kind of want
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: to grow out of it and you don't want to
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: be called like, hey remember you, I remember you. You
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: were that kid who had all that acne, right, you
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: want to leave it behind. So maybe Jupiter feels the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: same way. Mm hmm. Well, I think it's it's interesting
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: to me that it's you call it a storm. It's
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: a storm because the whole planet is basically just a
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: giant cloud weather system. What makes it sort of a contain?
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: What makes something a storm in a planet where basically
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: the whole thing is kind of a storm? This description
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: hasn't made you want to like vacation to Jupiter or something.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: There's no calm days on Jupiters. Yeah, that's a great question.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: I think that the thing that makes it a storm
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: is that it's separate from the rest of the cloud system.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: It's like self contained. Um, it eats. First of all,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: it eats other storms. We've seen like smaller peony size storms,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: storms like the size of huge hurricanes and Earth. They
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: this storm just like rolls over them and gobbles them up. What. Yeah,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: systems got its own energy. Is that what it means
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: like it has its own kind of like you know,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: perpetual kind of machine cycle something going on. It's kind
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: of like a bully. I don't know. It just like
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: sucks up the lunch money from other storms, right, And um, yeah,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: so it eats other storms. It's self contained and it's separate.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: There's a boundary there, right. You can see that. You
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: see these pictures from Juno. They're incredible, and there's the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: winds that are circling and there's an edge to it,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: after which you get these cloud bands and they're definitely different.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: So it's it's separate from the rest of Jupiter. And
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: I would say that the the other thing that makes
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: it a storm is that the winds are faster like
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: they go. The winds they're four miles per hour, are
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: definitely faster than they are on the rest of Jupiter.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: So it's the stormiest spot on Jupiter. If you were
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: going to vacation a Jupiter, I wouldn't recommend the Great
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Red Spot unless you like like that kind of thing. Exactly,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: windsurfing maybe, yeah, I don't know if you're super good
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: ultimate windsurfing, yeah, exactly. And um, you were asking earlier
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: about like is it connected to something underneath, And that's
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: a really good question. We don't don't know the answer. Um,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: we've probed it a little bit using various techniques, and
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: we know that it goes like a hundred hundred fifty
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: miles down, so definitely penetrates down all the way through
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: the cloud layer and into the like the blob of
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: gashous hydrogen. But we don't know if it's connected to
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: something else going on, Like is it an indication that
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: there's some like tectonic activity inside Jupiter that's venting out
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: some heat that's fueling this thing, or is it just
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: a crazy weather pattern that happens to support itself. Like
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the ideas are pretty broad still, which really still pretty clueless.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: So it could be just something that floats basically, or
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: it could be something that is kind of connected to
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the rocky center of Jupiter. Yeah, exactly the way like
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: storms on Earth, right, they get their energy usually from
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: the ocean, right, there's water and the heat from the ocean.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: And that's why, for example, global warming makes on average
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: larger hurricanes because warmer water fuels these storms, and then
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: the storms sort of peter out when they run into
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: land because they can no longer get fuel because they're
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: they're not over the ocean anymore. Um, I see, you don't, like,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: you don't get hurricanes in the middle of Africa or
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: through the middle of the US. You only get them
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: sort of in the you know, the the Caribbean or
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the Atlantic, right, that's right, And
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: that's why they tend to lose power when they hit land, right,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: their most ferocious just when they hit the the the beaches,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and then they sort of peter out as they go
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: further and further inland. Um, thank gosh. But you know,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: we don't know. Maybe in the future with climate change,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: hurricanes are just going to rule the world. We don't know.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: But there's no surface like that to slow down storms
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: on Jupiter. So we don't know what's fueling it. Is
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: there some like hot spot in the liquid ocean, liquid
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: hydrogen ocean that's connected to something We don't know if
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: it's just floating there. Yeah, it's a great question, But
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: what do you mean what fuels it? It needs energy
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: to keep going, and you're saying, we don't know where
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: that energy is coming from. Yeah, exactly. They've done some
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: thermal imaging, so they know that the center of it
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: seems to be warmer than the rest of it, But
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: they don't know if that's just some warm spot on Jupiter,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: or if that's coming from underneath, right, if it's like
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: drawing energy from inside Jupiter, or maybe there's some like
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: alien civilization there that's pumping out some heat signature from
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: its fusion reactor. I mean, that's crazy speculation. But I'm
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: sure somebody has written that science fiction novel. I was
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: thinking that would make a cool title for about the
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Eye of Jupiter. I'm sure I'm sure somebody has written
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: that book already. Oh oh man, sorry, every book you
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: we imagine somebody has ever written. You know, one time
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: in this podcast, I had an idea for a science
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: fiction story, and I speculated about it, and then somebody
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: send me an email saying, oh, that story has been written.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Here it is. So I'm pretty sure we're not coming
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: up with any new ideas on this podcast for science
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: fiction stories. That story has been written. I just wrote
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: it after I your podcast there is, and I'm suing you.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: We're talking about it without giving me credit. I think
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: I think that means we've made it. Daniel. We have
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: fan fiction, now, that's right, Jorge versus the Banana. I'm
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: gonna read that fan fiction somebody out there right that story. Yeah.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: So I think it's amazing that we just don't know,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: like what caused this, you know, is this something that
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: was created by some crazy event? You know, like did
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: something hit Jupiter and impact a bunch of energy and
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: cause the storm, because you know, we've seen stuff hit Jupiter, right,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: like back in the nineties, huge comet broke up and
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: hit Jupiter and it left some some spots on the
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: surface of Jupiter, but they didn't last, right, Those are
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: gone by now, right, But this is like a self contained, ongoing,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: almost independent phenomenon that's happening on the on the big
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: clouds of Jupiter, right, yeah, exactly, And we know it's
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: been around for at least a hundred and fifty years.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: But but it's not static, right, it's not unchanging. We've
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: been watching it now pretty carefully for a few decades,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: and we see it changing. The weird thing is it
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: seems to be shrinking and it's going from like more
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: oval to more circular. That kind of blew my mind
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: here that it's it's not a permanent feature of Jupiter.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: It might be like a transient, temporary thing that just
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: pops in and out. Yeah, it could be that you
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: tell your kids about this eye on Jupiter and they're like, whatever, Dad,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: that's our crazy story. Jupiter doesn't have an eye on it,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: you know whatever. We know it was aliens a few
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: or Daniel told us, I have a lot of questions
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: for future Daniel, Um, yeah, I got some numbers here.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Back in nineteen seventy nine, we measured it to be
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: about fifteen and a half thousand miles wide, and now
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: it's just under eight thousand miles wide. And yeah, so
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: it's it's a lot smaller than it used to be,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: Like your Grandpa's great red spot. It's much more impressive
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: than yours. And that's not just your grandpa talking. That's real, Like,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: that's data hit my days was much bigger than you guys. Yeah,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be downgraded from the great Red Spot to
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the pretty big red spot down to the red spot.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's just very slowly blinking, you know, I was
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: thinking that also, it is shrinking. That doesn't mean necessarily
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: it's going to disappear. It could go down and then
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: it could come back up. Right, we have no idea
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: what's causing this thing, what the dynamics are, what the
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: mechanism is, so we can't really predict anything about it, right, Um,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: And it's not like it's moving steadily. It was shrinking steadily,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: but then between its shrunk really dramatically for a while.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: We have no idea what happened there. Let's see what
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: happened in Um, Barack Obama got reelected. Thanks Obama. It's
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: a direct correlation here, exactly, A bunch of terrible movies
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: came out. Yeah, that's probably a yeah. All right, Well
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: let's get into the biggest question about the big Red Spot.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick great all right, Dianiel,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: here's the biggest question I have about the big red
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: spot in Jupiter, which is why is it red? I know,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: I wish I knew the answer that question. Um, nobody
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: knows is the short answer. Right. We still don't know
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: what makes it red. And it's like a tiny bit red.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: And this is not one of those things that astronomers
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: are like exaggerating and you check it out for yourself
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: and you're like, what, that's not too impressive. It's really
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: red because the rest of the planet is like paige brown,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: pretty boring cold colors. I mean, you are so critical
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: of the aesthetics of Jupiter, man, come on, jupiters beautiful Jupiter.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: I love you. I think I'm I'm praising its bold
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: choice of this red because you know, it's like, you know,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: it painted the walls paige, but then it painted a
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: giant red thought in the middle of the of the
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: living room. Yeah, we don't know what makes it red.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating, right, and it seems like it might not
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: be that hard to figure out. So scientists like said, oh,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: maybe it's ammonium hyde sulfate, or it's this other chemical
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: or sad chemical, and so they try to reproduce it,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: like reproduce the conditions of Jupiter in the lab and
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: see if they can make it glow red the same way,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: but they couldn't. Some of the current ideas are like
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: cosmic rays or coming down and radiating it and making
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: it glow red, but people have tried that in the
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: lab also, and they just can't get it to glow
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: the right color of red. I feel like you just
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: took it up a notch in the mystery scale. Not
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: only do we know not know what is the j
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: what is Jupiter's red spot? We we don't even know
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: why it's red. Might not even be red. It's definitely red,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: but yeah, why is it red? Not like purple or
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: blue or orange or something? Right? What's going on? It's
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: and the redness is so tantalizing because you know, red
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: really catches your eye. So it's not like it's a
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: beige spot on top of a white planet or something.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: We just don't understand it. It's so bright and dramatic, right,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: this this is a very very red spot. And so
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: something is going on there, and it's of interest to
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: you know, atmospheric physicists and scientists and weather scientists and
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff because it gives us a clue.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: It's like how these strooms form and what's going on
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: inside them. It seems like a really big clue. And
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: I know, Daniel that you can't resist a big red button.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: If you see one, does this should have cantalize you
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: and makes you want to go to Jupiter and press
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: that big red button. I do want to go to
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: but yes, I would love to go visit the great
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Red Spot. Thank you very much for offering to fund
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: my travel. I appreciate that. Quite a quiet invitation. There
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: she's going, I'll send you the check when you get there.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Just find charge you to um I Heart Media. I
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: think they're funding this operation. They like eyes, so they
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: know that's right. There's Jovian trip to the eye of Jupiter,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: brought to you by I Heart Media. I would definitely
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: go and love to see it. And yet red attracts me.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: You know. I sit in the control room of the
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: large head drunk collider with that big red cancel the
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: collider button, and yes I want to press it, and
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I tempted to press it, and so in the same way,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: I want to go see what's going on. It seems
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: like it's calling to us. Obviously, it's not maybe not
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: so obviously, but it seems like it's calling to us.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And I think it's fun that scientists want to figure
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: this out and that they can't. And uh, you know,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: it's not just curiosity. We're going to be looking at
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: the atmospheres of lots of other planets. Pretty soon. We
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: have these amazing lescopes now, like tests and other telescopes
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: coming online that that will be able to image the
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: atmospheres of exo planets. That means taking pictures of planets
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: and other solar systems. And then we're gonna have questions.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: We're gonna be like, what's going on there? Can we live? There?
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Is there water in that atmosphere? You know? And the
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: best way to figure out how to do that is
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: to practice by looking at the stuff nearby. It's kind
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: of like those weather cams you know, where you they
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: show you what the weather's like in Palm Beach or
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Santa Barbara or on the top of the mountain right
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: and you can see how which snow there is or
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: whether it's cloudy. You could be like, hey, that planet
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: looks pretty good, let's go over there exactly. And it's
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: the kind of thing you want to get right, because
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: you don't want to fly all the way over there,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: spend twenty years and be like, oh whoops, turns out
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: there's a huge storm and not a nice beach planet.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: So you definitely want to get this kind of thing right.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: We want to understand weather systems on other planets. That
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: would be very helpful. What is it called exo weather
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: or astro weather, astro meteora gene maybe asterolog climatology after climatology.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I love that, yeah, exactly. And you know, as the
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Earth heats up and our weather gets more and more extreme, um,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: it may be helpful to see what weather patterns are
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: like on other planets as as our weather gets more
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: and more like there. Yeah, if we if we eat
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: the wrong things, we could get a big giant's in Also,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: that's right here again you're blaming Jupiter's choices. See, you're
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: very judgmental about Jupiter in this podcast. All right, Jupiter,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: we love you the way you are. You make your choices,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: you know, that's fine. Um. I think Jupiter should be
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: very planet positive about itself, even though it is big
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: and round. Because it's round there there really aren't. You
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: don't want to be a slender planet. Now, that's for sure.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: It does have a lot of gas, that's true. Um,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't it be awesome if Jupiter was like a
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: second eye, and then that would really be wet. It's
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: like it's looking at us and that you're saying that
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: that's the amazing thing. It could happen because we don't
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: know what caused the first one, so it could just
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: generate generate a second eye. Yeah, and that kind of
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: thing does happen, like not on the scale of the
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Great Red Spot, but recently there was a sort of
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: a smaller white spot that formed on the top side
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: of the planet and it lasted several years and then dissipated.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: And so we don't know if like they just have
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: to have to get big enough and then they're stable,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: or if there's something fueling it underneath. We really don't know.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I would love to watch Jupiter and sort of time
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: lapse footage over like a million years, right, to see
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: how these things evolve, because remember, we have to think
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: about these things on longer time scales. Right, what we're
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: looking at is like a slow motion video of gas
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: bouncing around um of swirling, swirling vapors, you know, on
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: the longer time scales, this could just be a blip,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: or it could be something that's going to eventually grow
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: and take over Jupiter. Right, it could have had more
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: eyes in the past, right, Yeah, exactly, it could have
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: had more eyes as far as we know. Well, it's
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: pretty cool to think about the the idea that we
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: have all these mysteries right here in our backyard that
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: we have no idea about and that we may never
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: know and I mean that I could disappear before we
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: get the answer exactly. Our solar system is so full
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: of fascinating mysteries. You know, we're tempted to look out
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: on the grander scale and think about the history the
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: universe and how big is it? And is it accelerating?
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: And what is dark energy and all that stuff, But
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: we have a lot of mysteries in our backyard. You know,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: why does Mars not have a magnetic field? Why is
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Jupiter so crazy? Right? What happened in Neptune? What's going
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: on in the moons of Jupiter? Like, there's so many
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: things right here that we don't know the answers to,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: And those questions are more fascinating because we're much more
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: likely to figure them out. You know, we can go
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: visit Jupiter. It's not that big a deal. We can
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: send probes to land on these these moons. Eventually we
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: can go visit the Great Red Spot. Like these questions,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: we probably will get answers to, and that makes the
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: questions themselves to me much more exciting. Yeah, better go
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: before blink. That's right, before before somebody pops that ZiT.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you for joining us. That's been
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: our podcast for today. Thanks for listening, See you next time.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: If you still have a question after listening to all
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one word, or
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
• 38:42
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• 38:45
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• 38:49
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