Jakarta –
A group of scientists try to create artificial weather in a laboratory that mimics Jupiter and Saturn. Using very high pressure and laser shock waves, they create helium rain.
Quoted from New Atlas, Thursday (3/6/2021) the atmospheres of gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn are composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. Under such conditions, it had long been predicted that helium would form liquid droplets and fall, but experimental evidence proved difficult to trace.
The condition was recreated in the lab so it succeeded in making rain helium. This was possible thanks to researchers at the University of Rochester, UC Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.
The team first used a diamond anvil cell to compress a mixture of hydrogen and helium to about 40,000 times the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere. Then, the researchers fired a high-powered laser at the gas, generating a powerful shock wave that compresses it further, heating it to between 4,425 degrees Celsius and 9,925 degrees Celsius.
And sure enough, when the researchers studied the reflectivity of the signal it showed indications that its electrical conductivity changes rapidly at certain points. That means, the helium and hydrogen separate, causing the helium to agglomerate into droplets in the hydrogen. Being a little heavier, these droplets would then sink through the atmosphere like rain as expected.
“Our experiments show that deep within Jupiter and Saturn, helium droplets fall through large oceans of liquid metallic hydrogen,” said Gilbert Collins, lead author of the study.
“That’s a really amazing thing to think about the next time you see Jupiter in the night sky. This work will help us better understand Jupiter’s nature and evolution which is very important, because Jupiter has long been considered a space junk collector that protects our planet in our system. the sun,” he continued.
Helium isn’t the only unusual material that falls as rain in the atmospheres of other planets. Astronomers have previously found evidence rain on other planets there are hail, diamonds, rubies, iron, to titanium oxide.
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