Could Jupiter Have Water After All?

Astronomers have long suspected that Jupiter contains lots of water, but they've never been able to prove it. Learn about the new research that could help -- and thus solve lots of questions about our solar system -- in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works Pay brain
Stuff Lauren Vogel bomb Here many mysteries hide beneath Jupiter's
beautifully chaotic clouds, But with the help of some clever
astronomical techniques and NASA's Juno spacecraft, one of the giant
planet's biggest puzzles may be closer than ever to being solved.
As we know, water is the key to life on Earth.

(00:25):
Our efforts therefore to seek out life on other worlds
hinges on the detection of this important compound. Though scientists
don't think that life inhabits Jupiter, finding a Jovian reservoir
is one of the most pressing issues in planetary science.
Locating this water would help us understand how the Solar
System and Jupiter itself evolved. Unfortunately, Jupiter has been notoriously

(00:46):
unhelpful at revealing any water deep in its thick atmosphere,
leaving scientists and their models of planetary formation high and dry.
Before we sent spacecraft to investigate Jupiter, scientists assumed the
gas giant would contain encopious amounts of H two O.
The logic was simple, Earth is covered in the wet stuff,
and there's lots of water in the various moons that

(01:07):
orbit the giant planets. Therefore, Jupiter, the most massive and
most gravitationally dominant planet in the Solar System, must have
trapped the lion's share of our Solar System's water as
it formed billions of years ago. That logic was shattered
in when NASA's Galileo mission dropped a probe into the
planet's atmosphere to measure its composition. Much to everyone's surprise,

(01:29):
there was an astonishing lack of water. But the Galileo
probe may not have detected water simply because it wasn't
dropped in the right place. It could be as if
the probe parachuted over a desert on Earth. It's not
that there's no water on Earth, it's just that deserts
aren't known for being awash with the stuff. Jupiter's atmosphere
is dynamic, with jet stream storms and a non homogeneous composition.

(01:50):
The probe could only sample the atmosphere it was traveling
through in that one location, and that location might have
been as dry as a desert. The situation changed, however,
when we searchers used the powerful wm Keck observatory and
NASA infrared telescope facility on Hawaii's Mona Kea to stare
deep into Jupiter's biggest storm, the Great Red Spot. They

(02:11):
released their water filled news in an August study published
in the Astrophysical Journal and led by Gordon L. Bulaker
of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Bure Aker said in
a NASA statement, the moons that orbit Jupiter are mostly
water ice, so the whole neighborhood has plenty of water.
Why wouldn't the planet, which is this huge gravity well
where everything falls into it, be water rich too. To investigate,

(02:35):
Bureaker's team measured the infrared radiation leaking from deep beneath
the clouds. Specifically, they studied the infrared absorption spectrum of
a certain type of methane, which is known to exist
in a vapor throughout the planet. This infrared radiation should
leak through the clouds unimpeded, but should any water vapor
clouds be present, this radiation would be blocked. During analysis

(02:57):
of observations from Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the researchers found
three distinct cloud layers were blocking this infrared signal from
passing through the atmosphere, thus agreeing with the theoretical predictions
for the presence of water rich clouds. They also detected
large quantities of carbon monoxide, suggesting that there's lots of
oxygen available in Jupiter's atmosphere to chemically bond with molecular

(03:18):
hydrogen to form water if the temperature and pressure is
just right. The next step will be to use these
data to complement the Juno spacecraft's observations of Jupiter. JUNO
can make spectroscopic observations even deeper into Jupiter's atmosphere, and
it will do so for the entire planet, not just
the Great Red Spot. But should Juno also detect this

(03:39):
possible water cloud layer. The techniques developed by Bureaker's team
using telescopes on Earth will have been proven effective at
finding water deep inside Jupiter, thereby solving the gas giants
watery mystery, and these techniques could then be used to
probe deep into the atmospheres of other planets like Saturn, Urinus,
or Neptune without having to send a probe into them.
NASA named the Juno mission, by the way, after the

(04:00):
Roman goddess Juno, who was married to Jupiter and had
the handy ability to see through clouds. Today's episode was
written by Ian O'Neill and produced by Tyler Clang. To
find brain stuff, notebooks, and other brainy stuff, visit our
online shop at t public dot com slash brain stuff, and,

(04:21):
of course, for more on this and lots of other
perceptive topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot
com