The thunderstorms rumbling on Jupiter are teaching scientists new things about the largest planet in the solar system.
A Nature Communications paper published on May 23, found that lightning processes on the gas planet pulsate with a similar rhythm to the lightning that occurs in Earth's clouds. This is despite the two planets' major differences—Jupiter is a huge gas planet while Earth is rocky.
It's no secret that lightning occurs on Jupiter, and while it has been difficult to analyze in the past, scientists have now studied five years of high resolution data obtained by Juno—a NASA space probe orbiting the planet.
"Lightning on Jupiter is initiated in water clouds, similar to the terrestrial ones. The groups of pulses we have identified, indicate that the Jovian lightning evolves in distinct steps similarly as the terrestrial lightning do inside the clouds," the lead author of the study, Ivana Kolmašová, and scientists at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, told Newsweek.
From this data they found that lightning on Jupiter had time separation of about one millisecond. This suggested similar features to the thunderstorms we see on Earth.
Kolmašová said that from this, scientists can learn more about the planet's atmosphere.
"We can learn more about planetary atmospheres, as lightning is an indicator of convection, we can be sure that the clouds could be electrified and we can also get more information about atmospheric chemistry," Kolmašová said. "The Jovian lightning discharges occur in the water clouds, which are hidden below the brownish clouds composed mainly from ammonia."
Analyzing the atmosphere can also clear the way of hazards, not just on Jupiter, but also on other planets.
"We can protect descending probes against lightning discharges, in case of other than gas planets these hazards might be considered in case of landers and astronauts—but no detection of lightning on Mars up to now," Kolmašová said.
Kolmašová added that lightning could even point to signs of life on other planets, but not in the case of Jupiter.
"The findings were surprising, because nobody before was able to look at radio signals generated by lightning with so high resolution," Kolmašová said. "This study was not the first one showing the similarity of Jovian and terrestrial lightning processes. For example, our previous study from 2018 shows that the lightning rates on Jupiter are very close to these observed on the Earth, but the distribution of Jovian lightning completely differs from what we are used to see on the Earth. On the Earth, the tropical regions are found to be the most active ones. The majority of Jovian lightning occurs in midlatitudes and also in polar regions. We have nearly no lightning activity close to poles on the Earth. It means that conditions for a formation of Jovian and terrestrial thunderclouds are probably very different."
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Robyn White is a Newsweek Nature Reporter based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on wildlife, science and the ... Read more
