The stormy world of the solar system
If there is a weather forecast on Jupiter and you happen to live next to Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the weather forecast you hear might look like this: "The storm is expected to last for hundreds of years, with winds of 550 kilometers per hour." ”
Natural laboratory
Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, looks like a painted plate with white, yellow, reddish-brown stripes and dark red patches parallel to the equator. The largest plaque is located in Jupiter's southern hemisphere and looks like a red eye, nearly twice as large as Earth. In fact, this patch, known as the "Great Red Spot", is the largest known storm in the solar system. It has been there since Cassini described its existence in 1665, that is, the storm has lasted at least about 350 years. How long will it last? This has always been a topic of constant debate. Recently, it has been claimed that this Great Red Spot will exist for another 800 years.
In the solar system, storms are not a specialty of Jupiter, as do other planets. If you have the opportunity to cross the atmosphere of Venus, you will encounter strong winds of 100 meters per second, and may also encounter lightning. On Mars, storms often come with gravel. Winds on Neptune even reach 1,400 kilometers per hour, and compared to this wind, the strongest hurricane on Earth can only be regarded as a breeze.
Meteorologists only study weather on Earth, while planetary scientists focus on planets other than Earth, where the weather is what they study. This kind of research is also of great significance to the earth, providing answers related to the earth, such as how the earth's climate will develop and what the consequences of warming will be. In this sense, each planet is a natural laboratory that shows what the Earth might be likely to be in various situations. There is no doubt that planets other than Earth provide us with a different kind of "laboratory" for studying winds.
Travel through the atmosphere
Climate and wind only exist on planets with atmospheres, and in the solar system, there are at least 12 such planets. Scientists have discovered atmospheres on the Sun, most planets and three moons. Of course, the weather systems that drive them by the wind require energy. On Earth, this energy comes from the sun, which heats some air masses while others remain colder, so the hotter air masses flow to the cooler air masses, which forms the wind.
In the solar system, where the Earth is not far from the Sun, and more distant planets receive less energy from the Sun, scientists initially thought that such a planet could not produce more powerful winds than on Earth. However, when people launched some probes onto these planets, they were stunned.
To detect wind on other planets, scientists need to throw some of the probes into the atmospheres of those planets. If there is no wind on a planet, the detector will fall vertically under the influence of gravity. If the detector is deflected, it indicates that the detector has encountered wind, and scientists can estimate the speed and direction of the wind. Using this method, winds were found in the clouds of Venus, Jupiter, and Titan, Saturn's moon.
Using the above methods and other techniques, the scientists also detected that in Jupiter's upper atmosphere, wind speeds are about 320 kilometers per hour, Saturn's upper atmosphere is about 1290 kilometers per hour, and Neptune's upper atmosphere is about 1450 kilometers per hour.
However, although Earth and Mars are closer to the Sun than Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, the average wind speed of their upper atmosphere is only 96 kilometers per hour.
It's not the same as Earth
Neptune is so far away from the sun that from there the sun is just a bright star, and yet the wind there is blowing so fiercely, it is really puzzling. Timos Dowling, a planetary scientist at the University of Louisville in the United States, lamented: "This phenomenon is surprisingly contradictory to what we know about common sense. ”
However, the mystery of the wind is not alone. On Earth, the higher you stand, the wind gets stronger, so airplanes encounter winds that are stronger than cars, and winds on mountaintops are stronger than on the prairie, and the same is true on Venus and Mars. On Titan, however, the situation has changed. In 2005, when saturn's explorer Cassini threw a sub-probe, Huygens, into Titan's atmosphere, it found the strongest wind in the upper atmosphere, but as it landed, it could not sense the presence of wind. As the probe descended to halfway through the atmosphere, strong winds began again, and as they approached the ground, the winds stopped again. This strange phenomenon is also found on Jupiter. Scientists have found that Jupiter's strongest winds are not at the top of the atmosphere, but at the bottom of the atmosphere. One explanation for this phenomenon is that the heat there comes more from the planet itself, which affects the planet's climate from the inside out and also drives the winds there.
Furious storm swirls
With the improvement of observation technology, it has been found that in the solar system, storms similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot are not isolated, both Uranus and Neptune have dark spots, and Saturn has huge white spots, which are also huge rotating storm systems. In the fall of 2006, Cassini photographed an angry storm swirl near Saturn's south pole, and unlike the Great White Spot, the storm had a distinct center, a "storm eye." The inner wall of the eye of the storm is a "wall" of clouds, which is similar in form to a hurricane on Earth, but many times larger than a hurricane on Earth, and this is the first time that a storm so similar to an Earth hurricane has been seen on a planet other than Earth.
However, the most surprising storm is still the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. The color of the Great Red Spot remains a mystery to this day. Some believe that its red color comes from the red sulfide in Jupiter's atmosphere, but others believe that it is the result of some environmental change, which may be very related to changes in temperature. Another puzzle is, how can the Great Red Spot exist for so long, and how long will it last? Scientists have been searching for answers for decades. In November 2013, two physicists, including Philip Marcus of the University of California, published their latest research. Their approach to research was to use mathematical operations and computer simulations to "introduce" vertically flowing airflows in the Great Red Spot. This may seem bizarre, but the two scientists admit that only then will it be possible to explain why the Great Red Spot has been around for so long.
Long-lived Great Red Spot
For a storm system to persist, it must be constantly replenished with energy. On Saturn, Jupiter, and Earth, jets in the atmosphere often develop into swirls, and tornadoes on Earth are one of them, as is the Great Red Spot, but it is much larger than tornadoes on Earth. Astronomers once believed that the Great Red Spot gained its energy by "devouring" smaller swirls of streams thrown out of the jet. However, studies have shown that if this is the case alone, the Great Red Spot is not enough to last long, so many people believe that Jupiter's Great Red Spot is going to disappear.
However, in November 2013, two physicists, including Philip Marcus of the University of California, published their latest research. Their approach to research was to use mathematical operations and computer simulations to "introduce" vertically flowing airflows in the Great Red Spot. This may seem bizarre, but the two scientists admit that only then will it be possible to explain why the Great Red Spot has been around for so long.
When Marcus et al. introduced a vertically flowing stream of air, the air flow came out from the top and bottom of the Great Red Spot, and they "devoured" the nearby jets and then entered the Great Red Spot, and so on. Because the vertical flow of air constantly brings the hot air flow above the Great Red Spot and the cold air flow below into the Great Red Spot, and the nearby swirl is constantly brought into the Great Red Spot by this movement, the Great Red Spot can continuously obtain energy. According to the two scientists, the Great Red Spot will last for 800 years. But the latest observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show that the Great Red Spot is indeed shrinking. Why? We don't know yet.
The storm world on the planet has always been one of the most interesting topics for people, and there are many puzzles waiting to be solved. Scientists hope to help people explain more weather phenomena by solving these puzzles. These studies help predict storms, droughts and other meteorological disasters on Earth. In addition, the fate of the earth also touches people's heartstrings. Will the Earth become as hot as Venus? Or is it getting unusually cold like Mars? To answer these questions, one also needs to pay attention to the stormy world of the solar system.