Jupiter has auroras caused by X-rays. For four decades, astronomers have wondered how they were generated, until they were able to fully observe their mechanism for the first time, which could take place in many other parts of the universe.
Every few minutes, Jupiter produces a spectacular burst of X-rays as charged particles interact with the planet's atmosphere.
Juno reveals the dark origins of Jupiter's dawn auroras.
A similar phenomenon occurs on Earth that creates the Northern Lights, but Jupiter's is much more powerful, releasing hundreds of gigawatts of energy, enough to briefly power all of human civilization.
A study in Science Advances reports observations by an international group of astronomers who combined data from NASA's Juno satellite, which orbits the planet, with simultaneous X-ray measurements from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory in Earth's orbit.
The Truth After 40 Years
Astronomers have watched Jupiter produce X-ray auroras for forty years, but they didn't know how they are produced, only that they occur when ions collide with the atmosphere.
The team, led by University College London (UCL) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that X-ray flares are triggered by periodic vibrations of Jupiter's magnetic field lines.
These vibrations create waves of plasma (ionized gas) that send heavy ion particles "surfing" along magnetic field lines until they smash into the planet's atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of X-rays.
One of the study's co-authors, William Dunn from UCL, said they now know that these ions are carried by plasma waves, an explanation that had not been proposed before, although a similar process occurs in the Earth's aurora itself.
View of stratospheric winds near Jupiter's south pole (EFE).
So it could be "a universal phenomenon, present in many different environments in space," Dunn surmised.
X-ray auroras occur at Jupiter's north and south poles, often with clockwork regularity: during the observation used to obtain data, the planet produced bursts of X-rays every twenty-seven minutes.
The charged ionic particles hitting the atmosphere originate from volcanic gas pouring into space from the giant volcanoes of Io, one of Jupiter's moons.
That gas is ionized, that is, its atoms are stripped of electrons, due to collisions in Jupiter's immediate environment, forming a kind of doughnut of plasma that surrounds the planet.
An international team of astronomers has measured the winds of Jupiter's middle atmosphere (EFE) for the first time.
Similar processes could also occur on Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and, probably, on exoplanets.
While on Jupiter the magnetic field is filled with sulfur and oxygen ions that are ejected by Io's volcanoes, on Saturn the moon Enceladus shoots water into space, filling the planet's magnetic field with ions from the water group.
Same as the Northern Lights
The process observed on Jupiter bears great similarity to the ionic auroras that occur on Earth, where the responsible ion is a proton, which comes from a hydrogen atom, but the process is not energetic enough to create X-rays.
To conduct this research, the team analyzed observations of Jupiter and its surroundings made over twenty-six days by the Juno and XMM-Newton satellites.
The image of the moon Europa, of the planet Jupiter, whose surface is covered by a large layer of ice (AFP).
The researchers saw "a clear correlation" between the waves in the plasma detected by Juno and the auroral X-ray bursts at Jupiter's north pole recorded by XMM-Newton.
The next step was to use a computer model to confirm that the waves would propel heavy particles into Jupiter's atmosphere.
What's not yet clear is why magnetic field lines periodically vibrate, but it could be the result of interactions with the solar wind or high-speed plasma flows within Jupiter's magnetosphere.
EFE Agency.
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