Posted on 08/07/2018 10:12:39 PM PDT by BenLurkin
NASA’s Galileo spacecraft surprised scientists when it revealed that Jupiter’s moon Ganymede generated its own magnetic field. But new research shows Ganymede also creates incredibly powerful waves that rocket particles to enormous energies.
Scientists revealed these huge electromagnetic waves while studying old data from Galileo, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. The observations show another wild way that a moon can interact with the magnetic field of its planet.
Jupiter’s radius is around 11 times that of Earth, but it is perhaps 20,000 times more magnetic. This generates an intense radiation environment around the planet.
Typically, these waves around Jupiter have an amplitude a little higher than that of the magnetic field produced by the human brain. But when Galileo passed by the 3,274-mile-wide moon Ganymede, the wave height spiked a million times, to perhaps the strength of a magnetic field produce by a kitchen microwave.
As to where the waves come from, the interaction between Ganymede and Jupiter could cause an uneven distribution in electrons surrounding the moon. This could supply the necessary energy to generate the large waves in the magnetic field. But it’s more complex than that, according to the paper published in Nature Communications.
Moons without magnetic fields might make these kinds of waves also, though Jupiter’s moons Io and Callisto don’t. There are a host of different variables that could determine whether the waves exist and how big they’ll be, but determining all that will be up to future study.
U.S. and Europe both have plans to continue sending probes to the planet, and the accelerated particles could wreck manmade technology.
These results could also help scientists better understand the behavior of powerful magnetic fields and plasmas in general. Perhaps studying the radiation around Jupiter could help scientists find Jupiter-like exoplanets.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
No. Read the data. Jupiter would have to be much more massive then it is to be a star.
I know how it works. The data I read say’s Jupiter would need to much more massive then it is now. I read one estimate that say a million times buts that’s clearly incorrect.
As in 80 times.
Heh, heh. Yes.
Any star can reach incredible magnitude relative to the amount of gas and dust and other cosmic material it accumulates when it forms. Our sun is a rather common, garden variety sized star compared to some true giants like Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion and Deneb in Cygnus.
Really cool in that link where mass of the sun and planets is given in kg.
Give Archimedes a balance big enough, and he can weigh the world! :^)
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