The largest of the planets of the solar system, Jupiter weighs more than all of them put together. This is a typical victim of inordinate appetite: A recent study has shown that Jupiter himself destroys your own kernel.
Jupiter is considered to be the class of gas giants, the major planets, consisting (as stars) almost entirely of hydrogen and helium - in addition to it, it is relatively close to us to Saturn, Neptune and Uranus. Strictly speaking, the Giants are not gas: a huge mass of colossal pressure, continuously increasing to the center, making the hydrogen in their core fluid and conductive. Such a ...
At the same time weighing approximately ten times larger than our earth's core is a subtle part of a massive planet that is heavier than the entire Earth is 318 times. It is strange to imagine, but on Jupiter hydrogen and helium - they make up the bulk of it. But they break down and its core. This is the conclusion of a group of researchers working in California planetologist Bakharda Militzer (Burkhard Militzer).
A key component of the central part of Jupiter's core is a magnesium oxide (MgO), immersed in a hydrogen-helium fluid under great pressure of the order of 40 million atmospheres and temperatures of about 16 thousand. to. To recreate these hellish conditions in the laboratory is almost impossible, but the scientists managed to simulate them on the computer, and to evaluate the behavior of MgO and its effect on liquid hydrogen and helium.
Calculations showed that the MgO at the given conditions perfectly dissolved in the surrounding fluid. And though to estimate the rate of this process the authors find it difficult, you can quite safely assume that because a core of Jupiter is subject to constant erosion and continues to be destroyed. Today it should be noticeably smaller than in the first years of life on the planet.
In view of these findings raises an interesting question about the fate of dissolved oxide. Is the powerful convection currents in the liquid core shell to the kernel of the MgO raised above, being transferred to the gas the top layers of the planet? .
The same considerations apply to other gas giants - including and being around other stars, often weighing ten times more, even Jupiter. Moreover, a large gas planets, the erosion of the central core should proceed more rapidly. Perhaps in the face of some of them we are dealing with an interesting case of the planets do not have a nucleus.
