Scientists’ research answers big question about our system’s largest planet

New discoveries about Jupiter may result in a greater understanding of Earth’s personal space setting and affect a long-running scientific debate in regards to the solar system’s largest planet.

“By exploring a bigger space reminiscent of Jupiter, we will higher perceive the elemental physics governing Earth’s magnetosphere and thereby enhance our space climate forecasting,” stated Peter Delamere, a professor on the UAF Geophysical Institute and the UAF School of Pure Science and Arithmetic.

“We’re one massive space climate occasion from dropping communication satellites, our energy grid property, or each,” he stated.

House climate refers to disturbances within the Earth’s magnetosphere attributable to interactions between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic discipline. These are usually related to solar storms and the sun’s coronal mass ejections, which might result in magnetic fluctuations and disruptions in energy grids, pipelines and communication techniques.

Delamere and a staff of co-authors detailed their findings about Jupiter’s magnetosphere in a paper in AGU Advances. Geophysical Institute analysis affiliate professor Peter Damiano, UAF graduate pupil researchers Austin Smith and Chynna Spitler, and former pupil Blake Mino are among the many co-authors.

Delamere’s analysis reveals that our solar system’s largest planet has a magnetosphere consisting of largely closed magnetic discipline traces at its polar areas however together with a crescent-shaped space of open discipline traces. The magnetosphere is the defend that some planets have that deflects a lot of the solar wind.

The controversy over open versus closed on the poles has raged for greater than 40 years.

An open magnetosphere refers to a planet having some open-ended magnetic discipline traces close to its poles. These are beforehand closed traces which were damaged aside by the solar wind and left to increase into space with out re-entering the planet.

This creates areas on Jupiter the place the solar wind, which carries a number of the sun’s magnetic discipline traces, straight interacts with the planet’s ionosphere and environment.

Photo voltaic particles transferring towards a planet on open discipline traces don’t trigger the aurora, which largely happens on closed discipline traces. Nonetheless, the vitality and momentum of solar wind particles on open discipline traces does switch to the closed system.

Earth has a largely open magnetosphere at its poles, with aurora occurring on closed discipline traces.. It’s the transferred vitality on these open traces that may disrupt energy grids and communications.

To be able to examine Jupiter’s magnetosphere, Delamere ran quite a lot of fashions utilizing information acquired by the NASA Juno spacecraft, which entered Jupiter’s orbit in 2016 and has an elliptical polar orbit.

“We by no means had information from the polar areas, so Juno has been transformative when it comes to the planet’s auroral physics and serving to additional the dialogue about its magnetic discipline traces,” Delamere stated.

The controversy started with the 1979 flybys of Jupiter by NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. That information led many to imagine that the planet had a usually open magnetosphere at its poles.

Different scientists argued that Jupiter’s auroral activity, which is far totally different from Earth’s, indicated the planet had a principally closed magnetosphere on the poles. Delamere, a longtime researcher of Jupiter’s magnetic discipline, printed a paper supporting that view in 2010.

In 2021, he was a co-author on a paper by Binzheng Zhang of the University of Hong Kong that advised by way of modeling that Jupiter’s magnetosphere had two areas of open magnetic discipline traces at its poles.

The mannequin reveals one set of open-ended discipline traces rising from the poles and trailing outward behind the planet within the magnetotail, the slim teardrop-shaped portion of the magnetosphere pointing away from the sun. The opposite set emerges from Jupiter’s poles and goes off to the edges into space, carried by the solar wind.

“The Zhang end result supplied a believable rationalization for the open discipline line areas,” Delamere stated. “And this yr we supplied the compelling proof within the Juno information to assist the mannequin end result.

“It’s a main validation of the Zhang paper,” he stated.

Delamere stated it is vital to review Jupiter to higher perceive Earth.

“Within the massive image, Jupiter and Earth symbolize reverse ends of the spectrum—open versus closed discipline traces,” he stated. “To totally perceive magnetospheric physics, we have to perceive each limits.”

Delamere’s proof got here by way of an instrument on the Juno spacecraft that exposed a polar space the place ions flowed in a path reverse Jupiter’s rotation.

Subsequent modeling confirmed the same ion circulate in the identical space—and close to the open discipline traces proposed within the 2021 paper by Zhang and Delamere.

“The ionized gasoline on [closed] magnetic discipline traces linked to Jupiter’s northern and southern hemispheres rotates with the planet,” Delamere’s new paper concludes, “whereas ionized gasoline on [open] discipline traces that connect with the solar wind transfer with the solar wind.”

Delamere writes that the polar location of open magnetic field lines “might symbolize a attribute function of rotating big magnetospheres for future exploration.”

Different contributors are from the College of Colorado Boulder, Johns Hopkins College, Andrews College, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical College, College of Hong Kong, College of Texas San Antonio, Southwest Analysis Institute and O.J. Brambles Consulting in the UK.

Delamere will current the analysis in July on the Convention on Magnetospheres of the Outer Planets on the College of Minnesota.