Scientists discover magnetic envelope around Jupiter: evidence based on data from Voyager 2, which visited Jupiter 45 years ago
Kyiv • UNN
Voyager 2 data revealed magnetic jets around Jupiter, a discovery that is important for studying processes and structures on the gas giant. It is assumed that magnetic jets may be present on other planets.
The discovery of magnetic shell jets around a giant planet leads scientists to believe that these phenomena may exist on all planets in the Solar System. This is reported by UNN with reference to the journal Nature.
Details
Scientists have discovered evidence of magnetic jets around Jupiter, a phenomenon previously observed only around Earth and Mars. Astronomers from the Harbin Institute of Technology in Shenzhen re-analyzed data from NASA's Voyager 2 probe, which was launched in 1977 and left the heliosphere in 2018.
Magnetospheric jets - are fast plasma flows that form in the region between the planet's magnetic field and the solar wind, a stream of charged particles coming from the Sun. These jets have already been observed on Mars and Earth (with previous detections also on Mercury), but recent research has revealed the first evidence of their presence on Jupiter.
Scientists report the presence of three such jets, one of which is moving toward the Sun and two away from the Sun. These jets come from the bow region, where the solar wind encounters the magnetic field. Solar particles are heated and slowed down by the magnetic field.
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Additional findings include that Jupiter and its massive magnetosphere have massive jets, while Mars' modest interaction with the solar wind - due to the lack of a magnetic field across the planet - has much smaller jets.
The above analysis of the data collected by Voyager 2 creates an interesting assumption that similar phenomena may occur on other planets in the solar system. But further research is needed to understand the details of this behavior.
It is also important to note that the detection of jets in Jupiter's magnetosphere can now create a new laboratory for studying how plasma behaves further from the Sun.
The details of how the jets are formed in general are "an unresolved issue
But if the team of scientists can find more evidence, it could provide the scientific community with new information about how planets behave, as well as insight into some of the most powerful but elusive space weather phenomena in the solar system.
Recall
A recent study conducted by British astronomers has shown that the perceptions of the colors of planets such as Neptune and Uranus have been wrong until now. In fact, both planets of the ice giants have the same shades of greenish-blue.
