Massive amounts of energy swirling over Jupiter’s polar regions have been observed. This energy is believed to prompt the giant planet’s p

The mystery of Jupiter’s X-ray auroras finally solved

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2021-07-10 22:00:07

Massive amounts of energy swirling over Jupiter’s polar regions have been observed. This energy is believed to prompt the giant planet’s powerful auroras. However, Jupiter’s auroras present a powerful mystery.

Jupiter has the most powerful auroras in the solar system: they alone release about gigawatt energy, yet how Jupiter produces a spectacular burst of X-rays every few minutes remains mysterious.

Now, this 40-year old Jupiter’s northern lights mystery has been solved by a research team co-led by UCL (University College London) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In a new study, scientists combined close-up observations of Jupiter’s environment by NASA’s satellite Juno with simultaneous X-ray measurements from the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton observatory.

Scientists discovered that periodic vibrations of Jupiter’s magnetic field lines trigger those x-ray flares. These vibrations create plasma waves 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-ray auroras.

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