Friday, August 9, 2019

Friday Space Stuff: Amateur Astronomer Captures Massive Asteroid/Comet Impact On Jupiter...


Here's a quick pair of tweets I put together on it, earlier today [along with actual video of the event below; at right is simply a general Jupiter approach]:

". . .It is hard to estimate the size from this backyard scope's feed, but the size of the below impact suggests a flare as big as several of Earth's moons across. . . .

And, due to the speed of the winds -- 700+ miles an hour, around the middle of Jupiter, the object never "hits" anything solid -- only speeding gas streams, under tremendous pressure, spinning at supersonic speed. The flash is likely it burning up, in that thick atmosphere, and leaving a trail/tail. . . in the howling winds of Jupiter. . . .

I should probably add that if the object were dense enough (not a snowball, but some configuration of a mostly-metal asteroid), it might penetrate tens of thousands of miles into that pea soup, and reach dense ammonia layers. . . if it still survived beyond that [unlikely], it might eventually reach a "liquid" core -- of what is thought to be "metallic gasses" -- hydrogen and helium, so densely pressed by Lord Jupiter's gravity. . . that they become liquid metallic versions of those elements. It almost certainly was incinerated to nothing, long before reaching the interior -- Jupiter is just so. . . vast.




Now you know. Be better to one another. . . even strangers. . . than you really need to be, this weekend.

नमस्ते

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