Written by Samah Labib Wednesday, August 16, 2023 11:00 PM
Scientists have discovered that Saturn suffers from giant, long-lasting storms that last for centuries and create a deep atmosphere.
Saturn was previously considered somewhat quieter than the gas giant Jupiter Solar System Which has been home to a 10,000-mile-wide storm called the Great Red Spot for hundreds of years. Although the Great Red Spot is still the largest storm in the solar system, Saturn’s newly discovered storms are still powerful enough to put hurricanes on Earth to shame.
Believed to occur every 20 to 30 years, Saturn’s giant storms are similar to hurricanes on Earth but much larger than that. While Earth’s hurricanes get their energy from our planet’s oceans, the mechanism that drives the giant storms is in the hydrogen- and helium-rich atmosphere. For Saturn somewhat ambiguous.
But astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor learned more about these storms on Saturn by studying disturbances in the distribution of ammonia gas in the planet’s deep atmosphere. In the Solar System puts hurricane theory into a broader cosmic context, challenges our current knowledge and pushes the boundaries of terrestrial meteorology.”
Lee and the team discovered this disturbance by looking at radio emissions from ammonia Atmosphere of Saturn using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, although Saturn appears to have a mostly uniform color in visible light, its distinct bands and differences between layers of the atmosphere at varying altitudes are most noticeable at See it in radio waves.
That’s because radio observations can go deeper into planets’ atmospheres than optical telescopes can, allowing astronomers to better understand the chemical and physical processes that lead to cloud formation and heat transfer.
“At radio wavelengths, we probe beneath the cloud layers visible on giant planets,” UC Berkeley astronomer Emke de Pater said in the release. “Because chemical interactions and dynamics will alter the composition of a planet’s atmosphere, observations below these cloud layers are required to constrain the composition of a planet’s true atmosphere, which is a key factor for models of planet formation.”
The team found something surprising in the radio emissions emitted from within Saturn’s atmosphere in the form of anomalies in ammonia concentrations. They were able to link these anomalies to previous giant storms that swept through the gas giant’s northern hemisphere.
The concentration of ammonia was lower at midlatitudes than Saturn, indicating a higher elevation of the icy ammonia cloud layer, about 160 to 320 miles (100 to 200 kilometers) below this. However, as ammonia concentrations increased, the team believes that this enrichment is the result of ammonia transport. From the upper layers of the atmosphere to the lower layers in the form of ammonia rain, this effect is the result of massive storms and can last for hundreds of years.
The astronomers’ investigation shows that although Saturn and fellow gas giant Jupiter have similar compositions, the fifth and sixth planets from the sun are markedly different.
While Jupiter also has differences between layers throughout its atmosphere, these differences are not driven by storm activity, as is the case with Saturn. .
The research could also have an impact on how scientists search for giant storms across the gas giants outside the solar system.
