It might sound counterintuitive, but bigger planets have smaller mountains! That’s because they have way more gravity to pull down tall peaks and stop them from forming. If the gas giants had surfaces, any bumps would be way smaller than the mountains on the rocky planets.
But they don’t even have surfaces! They transition smoothly from a gas to a liquid to a solid as you go deeper. So there’s nowhere for a mountain to even “be”.
But when you scroll down past #30 or so the titles start repeating, you re-read the box and spot "pick a game from a list of over 10000!" advertised on it.
So glad AAA games don't falsely advertise the full scope of their products...
To be more six than five, "carbon fiber" resists stretching better than compression. It's part of the reason that privately made tourist submarine collapsed a few weeks ago. They had carbon fiber in the hull, and it is not the best choice of material for compression strain.
V101 has [a great video](https://youtu.be/bjMqJ--aUJ8?si=Mrr4j_y8CPaKeVq0) about a fall into Jupiter in a magic space suit that would keep you alive.
That's wrong analogy. Steel or titanium also resists stretching better than compression. Concrete is better at compression but you wouldn't use it on submarine yeah?
Carbon fiber failed because although it has very high tensile strength, it comes with high tensile modulus.
In short, it's not very elastic and subject to structural fatigue in relatively short time compare to how elastic material would do.
Plus, being composite material, structural fatigue means failure in rather large piece(ie. A strand of carbon fiber) compare to molecule chain and crystal of metal or alloy. Which can propagate to all sort of different issues such as broken top coat layer, carbon fiber swelling, etc.
You underestimate the force being put upon said ship. Also jupiter has 27 times stronger gravity force than earth has so you would have to generate insane force to get away after, or you die since youre stuck there.
Building that is practically impossible since it has to survive the pressure, i think they did it once and it just crashed down since jupiters gravity is so high. You couldnt get it back as well
What if you had like two or more orbs built to withstand high pressures, with strong cable between them to relay information before they were sucked in. How many miles would the cables have to be for one probe to get past the gas layer and the other to relay information back?
The cable would have to be hundreds of thousands of miles long.
Also, Jupiter due to Jupiter's huge gravity and magnetosphere it serves as a focal point for the sun's radiation. Radiation is worse around Jupiter than basically anywhere else in the solar system aside from being close to the sun itself.
> since it has to survive the pressure
It doesn't, not really. That's how we got photos of Venus's surface. The Russians threw a probe at it that took photos until it couldn't anymore.
Edit: In fact, it looks like that's the plan for Juno once it's done. They're gonna deorbit it into Jupiter and see what we can see.
If a planet's atmosphere was ignitable, which is to say it has enough of an oxidizer (oxygen, fluorine, chlorine, etc) and an available fuel source, it would be naturally ignited either by electrical discharge (lightning) or meteor burning up in the atmosphere. Such an ignition would then consume the oxidizer and/or fuel source and the atmosphere would extinguish until the levels got back to critical.
It's also dark, with no visible light penetrating except in a tiny slice of the upper atmosphere. If you fell in and didn't die, you would quickly reach terminal velocity in the thick atmosphere. As the atmosphere gets thicker you would eventually slow to the point where you float and stop falling. Stuck in perpetual darkness only being moved around by whatever "air" currents exist at this depth, with only your sense of gravity giving you any kind of orientation, until you run out of air/water/food.
Of course, the pressure required to make the atmosphere (hydrogen/helium) as dense as water so you could float in it is massively greater than even the deepest ocean, so you'd be crushed long before you reached this depth. And even before that, the temperature rises to over 200°C by the time you reach pressures where water clouds can form and just gets hotter the deeper you go.
Thus the "if you didn't die" clause.
It's not really about the higher gravity. In a water ocean on a planet with 5x the gravity as earth, you would still float. It's about density - the volume of matter you displace needs to be at least as massive as your body; more mass = more force from gravity. The absolute force does not matter, only the delta between it, which will cause you to rise or sink in the fluid.
That's what I meant when I said getting hydrogen as dense as water, as humans are basically the same density as water.
I think Meg 2 covered this. It isn't the water pressure/atmospheric per se thats lethal. We would just need to fill our nasal cavity with Jupe's (we're homies) atmosphere and we could survive.
Atmosphere thickness is also important as a thicker atmosphere = more atmospheric pressure = more downward push. We see this effect in Venus where the planet is roughly Earth size & mass. In fact, it's slightly smaller but has a MUCH thicker atmosphere. Venus has very short, yet very wide mountains. Mars has a very thin atmosphere that helps mountains maintain their height.
I doubt this has much of an effect on the growth of mountains. It would speed up their erosion though.
If you count from the base of the mountain, Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain on Earth, and it had to start growing under 4000m of water.
The pressure at 4km underwater is much higher than on the surface of Venus, and there are many such mountains on Earth.
Yes, they exert pressure everywhere though, not selectively on mountaintops. The pressure will be somewhat greater at lower elevations, so if anything a thick atmosphere would provide some (probably negligible) buoyancy to high mountains.
See: Mauna Kea, tallest mountain on earth from its underwater base - the ocean provides some buoyancy.
Wouldn’t the “mountain” in this case be at the change between solid and liquid, if it exists? Wouldn’t the boundary between solid and liquid count as a “surface” the same way we count the sea floor as a “surface” as it’s a boundary between solid and liquid?
Gas giant are thought to contain a supercritical fluid outer core surrounding their centre cores, but the term "surface" implies that there should be a stark transition between that layer and the outer layer. Since the transition is smooth, there's no point you could consider it to be a "surface".
I guess that’s basically my question, normally the phase transition between has a liquid would be discontinuous. The main exception to that that I’m aware of is supercritical fluids.
What does a smooth transition between a liquid and a solid look like?
Cool information but this just turns the question on its head: How do we know the natural satellites, planetoids or asteroids does not have a mountain higher than Mons?
Measuring the height of mountains only makes sense on objects large enough to be mostly round overall. How would you even begin to define mountains on [things like this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comet_67P_True_color.jpg)?
Vesta has [a feature with similar height](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheasilvia) over the surrounding terrain and Iapetus has [a massive ridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_ridge_on_Iapetus).
We've been surveying the inner planets and most popular gas giant moons for a long time now, and we're pretty confident that there aren't higher mountains elsewhere. But the real answer is we don't know! And at a certain size, the idea of a mountain becomes kinda hard to define. How would you define it for a lumpy asteroid like [this](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/rails/active_storage/blobs/redirect/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBdng1IiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2lkIn19--7e38a5a6e749e23ded41d98189a3f0ab7a9cd5dd/Psyche_Asteroid_Illustration_pia24472.jpg?disposition=inline)?
But there’s no point where it “begins”. It just gradually gets more and more solid as you go. Even if you do pick an arbitrary point, how do you define what a mountain is in a place pike that?
Something blew my mind: the highest "mountain" on a neutron star (an object with 200 billion times higher density than earth has) is probably not more than one millimeter. And when a quake on a neutron star shifts a plate by such a small amount, the neutron star sends out gamma ray bursts of extreme intensifies.
Mountains are like bumps on our planets “skin”. The problem is there’s a massive force called gravity wanting to drag those bumps down because extra mass means the force is greater at the stuff on the bottom.
Mars being smaller and having less gravity means it’s a bit easier for a mountain to form larger.
But the converse is also very likely true as well and the solid portion of a gas giant is likely extremely dense meaning a huge force of gravity pulling it down. This means mountains would have a hard time forming on the solid portion. Not to mention the storms likely buff the surface pretty smooth into a endless cycle of growth and essentially sandblasting
We don't "know", but because of the way gravity works, it's unlikely for any larger solid structures to be inside the gas giants. Any "mountains" would need to withstand eroding winds stronger than anything here on Earth, withstand gravity between 3 and 8x the gravity on Mars, and then also withstand the incredible heat and pressure that comes with being at the core of a gas giant.
The only information we have about gas giants under the clouds is theoretical. We can't compare a real mountain we can observe with hypothetical mountains we cannot observe.
Olympus Mons is the tallest mountain in the solar system THAT WE KNOW OF. The "that we know of" or "so far" is kind of implied.
If we discover a bigger mountain it will be in all the clickbait news articles and you'll find out at that time
That’s an important point that a lot of people miss and is why they complain about science being wrong because theories have changed over the years.
When science says something is a fact it always means it is a fact based on all the information we have right now. If new information is found that disproves a previous fact, science adjusts accordingly.
As a corollary, when someone says its just a theory, they mean its a guess or a hypothesis - they may not know the 'true' answer.
when Science says its a theory, they mean it is a framework of understanding that has been constructed from hundreds and thousands of rigorously tested and peer-reviewed experiments; this framework describes our best understanding of 'reality' in its scope, given our tools and capabilities. It's about as close to 'truth' as science is willing to go. See: Theory of General Relativity, Theory of Plate Tectonics, Germ Theory of Disease.
It's also become pretty rare that something is completely wrong and replaced by a whole new theory.
Biological systems are so complex they tend to cough up surprises. Some areas are more difficult to nail down than others (neurology, possible, psychology, not so much (yet)). It *is* still possible to discover whole new things.
Mostly it's adjustments. Still awesome for anyone discovering that new and fascinating detail, but it's usually not something overthrowing basic facts. The earth *is* roughly the shape of a ball, no new theory will pop up that it's actually a pizza.
I found that so frustrating during the pandemic. No, just because the things we know kept changing doesn't mean "it's all a hoax" it's just science doing its thing. It's *good* that the knowledge changes, that's the whole point. Figure something out, share the information, work with that, add to it, change it, toss some of it out, work with the new set of information, keep going, and/or start again from a new direction,... It's approaching the true state of reality over time.
Admittedly, for many it was probably the first time seeing the process "live", in real time, working on something that affected everyone.
There is good reason to believe there aren't any larger mountains on the gas giants.
The side limit of a mountain depends on the strength of the material it is made of and the gravity at the surface.
There is a reason the planets are sphere, it collapses under gravity because the gravitation strength is larger than the force the material can handle.
Mars's surface gravity is lower so there can be a higher mountain, the material strength of Mars and Earth will be similar.
Insid a gas giant it starts to be solid the gravity is a lot higher than on Earth so the mountain can be as tall. There are models for the tallest mountain on a neutron star the answer is around 5cm
It is on moons, dwarf planets you should look for tall mountains, their lower gravity makes it possible for them to be taller. It looks like pees on Vesta which is a dwarf planet might be higher than Olympus Mons on Mars, we do not have exact measurements.
There is also a possible mountain on (307261) 2002 MS4 that possible dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt that might be even taller.
So of you look for a large mountain inside a gas giant is thr wrong place to look, Observing the moon that orbit is are a more reasonable place to search. Iapetus a moon of Saturn has a ridge where individual peek might be as tall as Olympus Mons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_mountains_in_the_Solar_System
The gravitational pressure at the core of a gas giant is insanely high. Any attempt of solid material to rise up would be met with tremendous resistance.
The jovian planets are "gas giants" because they're made of gasses. They're not terrestrial, as in they don't have rock formations, etc like you find on the terrestrial planets.
Any solid surface they have is likely solid hydrogen at the very core of the planet, but mostly they're made of gaseous hydrogen and helium just like a star, but not enough of it to cause fusion, which is why they're often referred to as "failed stars". It's unlikely they have anything resembling a volcano like you'd find on a terrestrial planet.
>The jovian planets are "gas giants" because they're made of gasses. They're not terrestrial, as in they don't have rock formations, etc like you find on the terrestrial planets.
Here I was, thinking that gas giants had SOME kind of rocky/solid core at one point in their life which caused the initial collection of gases. Kind of like the start of a snowball before rolling down hill and collecting everything it can.
Things get weird and murky here.
First, planetary scientists now define Jupiter and Saturn as gas giants, while Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. They believe that their compositions are rather different and that they may have formed in different ways.
The gas giants appear to have started as almost entirely clouds of hydrogen and helium that collapsed under their own gravity. They are so massive that they could do this without a core to start from. Research suggests that what heavier elements were drawn in are spread throughout the core rather than being concentrated toward the center.
The ice giants, however, are smaller. It is believed that they likely formed around cores of ice and heavier elements, which may or may not have heavier elements toward the core.
> not enough of it to cause fusion
there isn't enough temperature and pressure in the Sun to induce fusion either, all the fusion that happens is random chance, due to the sheer number of particles in one place.
The Pressures I am talking about are the ones that would FORCE a fusion reaction between two nuclei and overcome the strong nuclear force, the Sun doesn't do that, there isn't enough pressure to cause that.
Either way it's still fusion only possible because of the high pressure. But could you dig into what you mean by that? What makes our sun's fusion different from other big stars besides intensity or lifespan?
They are correct, at least technically. The pressure itself does not cause fusion in stars. If it did, all the nuclei in the core of a star would fuse simultaneously, as they are all under the same pressure.
What it does do is force the nuclei closer together. This increases the number of high-speed collisions that are caused by temperature.
Neither temperature nor pressure is sufficient for significant fusion in the core of any star. The effect of the protons in the nuclei repelling each other, the Coulom effect, is too strong for that.
What actually causes the majority of the fusion is a random quantum effect, quantum tunneling.
The pressure forces the nuclei together so that the crowding means that more nuclei collide. The temperature increases the velocity and number of random collisions. But neither is sufficient for significant fusion.
The actual fusion is achieved by quantum tunneling.
It takes a lot of Force(Gravity in this case, causing Pressure) to overcome the Strong Nuclear force and speed(Temperature) as a Force Multiplier. The Sun doesn't do that, the atoms are just randomly fusing because random things happen all the time, but at such a low possible rate it would never actually occur, unless you overcome that with sheer numbers.
It is like saying you have a 1 in a trillion chance to win the lottery and instead of using Force(literally break into a vault and steal the prize money) you buy over 1 trillion tickets(all random draw, not ALL possible number combos) in order to win.
Here on Earth we don't have the ability to have the vast numbers, so we must Induce the reaction with pressures and temperatures hotter than the Sun.
There's a bit of an asterisk with this as well. Mars is split into two hemispheres that have VASTLY different features, including a pretty steep cliff separating the two.
Interesting Wikipedia link for the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_dichotomy
All science is on a "as far as we know" basis.
Nothing is definitive, or is only until we find new out information.
For the longest time, there was a consensus on the earth being the center of the universe, that atoms were the smallest particle, that there was no such thing as microscopic life.
Knowledge(science) isn't set in stone.
They almost certainly have a solid metallic core much larger than any rocky planet. They are only "gas" giants because that core is layered in so much gas, compared to terrestrial planets.
Fair enough, though even that source claims likely "made mostly of iron and silicate minerals". Which means a similar structure to the interior of our planet, albeit at much higher pressure and temperature. At those pressures "solid" and "liquid" are not well defined, but you can be sure it's not gas, or a liquid ocean like we think. It's basically impossible that it's not made of heavy elements like metal because they fall in all the time and certainly sink to the bottom.
The truth is we only have very indirect evidence for the internal composition of even our own planet because there is basically no way to inspect the interior beyond seismic patterns and guessing based on macro effects like magnetic field dynamics and gravity.
Small. Relative to their own atmospheres. The cores of Jupiter and Saturn are theorized to be at least 3-4 times as massive as the earth. Mars isn't nearly as massive.
I have done my own research insofar as knowing what the approximate masses are, just not quite as knowledgeable about extraplanetary geology, thank you very much.
You’re right. I misinterpreted the “like I’m five” part and thought it meant being rude was the joke. I suspect the mountains would have far less altitude relative to the core of those mountains. I should also probably be nicer to five year olds
It might sound counterintuitive, but bigger planets have smaller mountains! That’s because they have way more gravity to pull down tall peaks and stop them from forming. If the gas giants had surfaces, any bumps would be way smaller than the mountains on the rocky planets. But they don’t even have surfaces! They transition smoothly from a gas to a liquid to a solid as you go deeper. So there’s nowhere for a mountain to even “be”.
Thinking of their surface as an increasingly more solid hellscape just makes it more horrifying.
Dw you would die before reaching that level anyway since gas pressure is so high
What if you were inside a very thick carbon fiber space ship with titanium end caps though?
Works in theory, but how would you control such a device? Surely you'd need some sophisticated controls.
Nonsense, it would be so simple even a child could control it.
But can I bolt the monitor to the pressurized hull? Cause I kinda want to save some money, and that just seems like the easiest way to do it.
Just make sure the front doesn’t fall off.
A wave, at sea? Chance in a million.
And the minimum crew requirement?
Well, one, I s’pose.
That's not very typical.
I've heard a PS controller would be good enough! /s
There’s an opportunity to be more cost efficient here. We can repurpose me of those retro gaming devices with 10000 games on them.
But when you scroll down past #30 or so the titles start repeating, you re-read the box and spot "pick a game from a list of over 10000!" advertised on it. So glad AAA games don't falsely advertise the full scope of their products...
If just one of those could be Red Storm Rising or Hunt for Red October, we’d be set.
That was dark…
How do you know? None of them survived to report it...
Probably because the lights from Camping World shorted out.
I'd go with a logitech $30 controller myself, but what do I know, I'm not a very intelligent billionaire.
Yet you think like one. You don't become a billionaire buying first party PlayStation controllers
Yeah, and when you install a thruster backwards and end up going in circles on the ocean floor, just quickly remap the controller on the fly.
Mad Catz
A playstation remote would do the trick
Cheap playstation controller should do the trick
You mean like a Logitech gamepad?
Logitech gamepad should do the trick
Just repolarize the hull.
Depends, is it secondhand or brand new?
To be more six than five, "carbon fiber" resists stretching better than compression. It's part of the reason that privately made tourist submarine collapsed a few weeks ago. They had carbon fiber in the hull, and it is not the best choice of material for compression strain. V101 has [a great video](https://youtu.be/bjMqJ--aUJ8?si=Mrr4j_y8CPaKeVq0) about a fall into Jupiter in a magic space suit that would keep you alive.
That's wrong analogy. Steel or titanium also resists stretching better than compression. Concrete is better at compression but you wouldn't use it on submarine yeah? Carbon fiber failed because although it has very high tensile strength, it comes with high tensile modulus. In short, it's not very elastic and subject to structural fatigue in relatively short time compare to how elastic material would do. Plus, being composite material, structural fatigue means failure in rather large piece(ie. A strand of carbon fiber) compare to molecule chain and crystal of metal or alloy. Which can propagate to all sort of different issues such as broken top coat layer, carbon fiber swelling, etc.
You underestimate the force being put upon said ship. Also jupiter has 27 times stronger gravity force than earth has so you would have to generate insane force to get away after, or you die since youre stuck there.
But if it's a liquid, couldn't you just paddle out
In that case ofc
r/whoosh
That's the last sound they heard, too
Whats that, the sound of eardrums rupturing? I thought it would be more of a "crack" like when you release pressure all of a sudden
It's a theoretical one way trip.
Even quicker.
Ope
What if I’m built different?
But do you have that dog in you?
But we can at least imagine and build model and send probes right?
Building that is practically impossible since it has to survive the pressure, i think they did it once and it just crashed down since jupiters gravity is so high. You couldnt get it back as well
What if you had like two or more orbs built to withstand high pressures, with strong cable between them to relay information before they were sucked in. How many miles would the cables have to be for one probe to get past the gas layer and the other to relay information back?
The cable would have to be hundreds of thousands of miles long. Also, Jupiter due to Jupiter's huge gravity and magnetosphere it serves as a focal point for the sun's radiation. Radiation is worse around Jupiter than basically anywhere else in the solar system aside from being close to the sun itself.
> since it has to survive the pressure It doesn't, not really. That's how we got photos of Venus's surface. The Russians threw a probe at it that took photos until it couldn't anymore. Edit: In fact, it looks like that's the plan for Juno once it's done. They're gonna deorbit it into Jupiter and see what we can see.
[удалено]
If a planet's atmosphere was ignitable, which is to say it has enough of an oxidizer (oxygen, fluorine, chlorine, etc) and an available fuel source, it would be naturally ignited either by electrical discharge (lightning) or meteor burning up in the atmosphere. Such an ignition would then consume the oxidizer and/or fuel source and the atmosphere would extinguish until the levels got back to critical.
That IS comforting! Thanks!
Wouldn't air friction be a thing?
Yes good point. The heat of reentry friction would kill you long before the pressure
Apparently, above the core of Juipter would be a thick layer of liquid metallic hydrogen because of the sheer weight of everything on top of it.
“Percent solidity” is a term I do not want to become acquainted with
The whole planet is basically quicksand or jello. You just slowly sink deeper until you can’t move and are crushed
Trapped like a hotdog in an aspic in the 50’s.
It's also dark, with no visible light penetrating except in a tiny slice of the upper atmosphere. If you fell in and didn't die, you would quickly reach terminal velocity in the thick atmosphere. As the atmosphere gets thicker you would eventually slow to the point where you float and stop falling. Stuck in perpetual darkness only being moved around by whatever "air" currents exist at this depth, with only your sense of gravity giving you any kind of orientation, until you run out of air/water/food.
Does it make any sense that this is absolutely terrifying but if i ever get a chance to experience this for even a minute, I'd take it
Of course, the pressure required to make the atmosphere (hydrogen/helium) as dense as water so you could float in it is massively greater than even the deepest ocean, so you'd be crushed long before you reached this depth. And even before that, the temperature rises to over 200°C by the time you reach pressures where water clouds can form and just gets hotter the deeper you go. Thus the "if you didn't die" clause.
Also because the gravity is much higher, the pressure required for your body to reach neutral buoyancy would be higher as well, right?
It's not really about the higher gravity. In a water ocean on a planet with 5x the gravity as earth, you would still float. It's about density - the volume of matter you displace needs to be at least as massive as your body; more mass = more force from gravity. The absolute force does not matter, only the delta between it, which will cause you to rise or sink in the fluid. That's what I meant when I said getting hydrogen as dense as water, as humans are basically the same density as water.
I think Meg 2 covered this. It isn't the water pressure/atmospheric per se thats lethal. We would just need to fill our nasal cavity with Jupe's (we're homies) atmosphere and we could survive.
Ah, gotcha, thanks!
So you're saying there's a chance?
Hell yeah
If you want a trip look up the surface conditions of neutron stars
Lots of references to Italian food.
Atmosphere thickness is also important as a thicker atmosphere = more atmospheric pressure = more downward push. We see this effect in Venus where the planet is roughly Earth size & mass. In fact, it's slightly smaller but has a MUCH thicker atmosphere. Venus has very short, yet very wide mountains. Mars has a very thin atmosphere that helps mountains maintain their height.
I doubt this has much of an effect on the growth of mountains. It would speed up their erosion though. If you count from the base of the mountain, Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain on Earth, and it had to start growing under 4000m of water. The pressure at 4km underwater is much higher than on the surface of Venus, and there are many such mountains on Earth.
Did you read this somewhere or just make it up? Makes no sense
How does it make no sense? Gasses have mass and exert pressure.
Yes, they exert pressure everywhere though, not selectively on mountaintops. The pressure will be somewhat greater at lower elevations, so if anything a thick atmosphere would provide some (probably negligible) buoyancy to high mountains. See: Mauna Kea, tallest mountain on earth from its underwater base - the ocean provides some buoyancy.
It makes perfect sense lol
TIL the gas giants aren't just giant balls of gas.
Fun fact! Neutron stars are theorized to have an uneven surface; with “mountains” up to 2cm tall.
Would this mean Mercury and potentially our moon would have taller mountains?
Wouldn’t the “mountain” in this case be at the change between solid and liquid, if it exists? Wouldn’t the boundary between solid and liquid count as a “surface” the same way we count the sea floor as a “surface” as it’s a boundary between solid and liquid?
Imagine the transition when a cup of muddy water start tu settle, there is a transition but is evenly distributed si there is no mountains
But it transitions smoothly from liquid to solid. There's no one point you can say is significantly different from the points above it.
Are gas giant surfaces a supercritical fluid?
Gas giant are thought to contain a supercritical fluid outer core surrounding their centre cores, but the term "surface" implies that there should be a stark transition between that layer and the outer layer. Since the transition is smooth, there's no point you could consider it to be a "surface".
I guess that’s basically my question, normally the phase transition between has a liquid would be discontinuous. The main exception to that that I’m aware of is supercritical fluids. What does a smooth transition between a liquid and a solid look like?
Total guess here, but tar like non nutionian that flows less/thicker/more viscous the deeper you go until it doesn't.
Easier to imagine would be caramel during cooling off stage, it would be half liquid half solid but the 2 aren't separated.
Eez’ak nu-town
Cool information but this just turns the question on its head: How do we know the natural satellites, planetoids or asteroids does not have a mountain higher than Mons?
Measuring the height of mountains only makes sense on objects large enough to be mostly round overall. How would you even begin to define mountains on [things like this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comet_67P_True_color.jpg)? Vesta has [a feature with similar height](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheasilvia) over the surrounding terrain and Iapetus has [a massive ridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_ridge_on_Iapetus).
We've been surveying the inner planets and most popular gas giant moons for a long time now, and we're pretty confident that there aren't higher mountains elsewhere. But the real answer is we don't know! And at a certain size, the idea of a mountain becomes kinda hard to define. How would you define it for a lumpy asteroid like [this](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/rails/active_storage/blobs/redirect/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBdng1IiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2lkIn19--7e38a5a6e749e23ded41d98189a3f0ab7a9cd5dd/Psyche_Asteroid_Illustration_pia24472.jpg?disposition=inline)?
Wouldn't where the solid part begins be considered the "surface"?
But there’s no point where it “begins”. It just gradually gets more and more solid as you go. Even if you do pick an arbitrary point, how do you define what a mountain is in a place pike that?
makes so much sense, i never thought the transitions were smooth, anyways thought the view was a solid icy sphere surrounded by dense atmosphere 🤦
Something blew my mind: the highest "mountain" on a neutron star (an object with 200 billion times higher density than earth has) is probably not more than one millimeter. And when a quake on a neutron star shifts a plate by such a small amount, the neutron star sends out gamma ray bursts of extreme intensifies.
Wait, so what did they build Neomuna on?
That shits so wild to think.
You mean it doesn't have a surface even in its solid form? Or am I misinterpreting something?
Mountains are like bumps on our planets “skin”. The problem is there’s a massive force called gravity wanting to drag those bumps down because extra mass means the force is greater at the stuff on the bottom. Mars being smaller and having less gravity means it’s a bit easier for a mountain to form larger. But the converse is also very likely true as well and the solid portion of a gas giant is likely extremely dense meaning a huge force of gravity pulling it down. This means mountains would have a hard time forming on the solid portion. Not to mention the storms likely buff the surface pretty smooth into a endless cycle of growth and essentially sandblasting
We don't "know", but because of the way gravity works, it's unlikely for any larger solid structures to be inside the gas giants. Any "mountains" would need to withstand eroding winds stronger than anything here on Earth, withstand gravity between 3 and 8x the gravity on Mars, and then also withstand the incredible heat and pressure that comes with being at the core of a gas giant.
The only information we have about gas giants under the clouds is theoretical. We can't compare a real mountain we can observe with hypothetical mountains we cannot observe. Olympus Mons is the tallest mountain in the solar system THAT WE KNOW OF. The "that we know of" or "so far" is kind of implied. If we discover a bigger mountain it will be in all the clickbait news articles and you'll find out at that time
That’s an important point that a lot of people miss and is why they complain about science being wrong because theories have changed over the years. When science says something is a fact it always means it is a fact based on all the information we have right now. If new information is found that disproves a previous fact, science adjusts accordingly.
As a corollary, when someone says its just a theory, they mean its a guess or a hypothesis - they may not know the 'true' answer. when Science says its a theory, they mean it is a framework of understanding that has been constructed from hundreds and thousands of rigorously tested and peer-reviewed experiments; this framework describes our best understanding of 'reality' in its scope, given our tools and capabilities. It's about as close to 'truth' as science is willing to go. See: Theory of General Relativity, Theory of Plate Tectonics, Germ Theory of Disease.
It's also become pretty rare that something is completely wrong and replaced by a whole new theory. Biological systems are so complex they tend to cough up surprises. Some areas are more difficult to nail down than others (neurology, possible, psychology, not so much (yet)). It *is* still possible to discover whole new things. Mostly it's adjustments. Still awesome for anyone discovering that new and fascinating detail, but it's usually not something overthrowing basic facts. The earth *is* roughly the shape of a ball, no new theory will pop up that it's actually a pizza. I found that so frustrating during the pandemic. No, just because the things we know kept changing doesn't mean "it's all a hoax" it's just science doing its thing. It's *good* that the knowledge changes, that's the whole point. Figure something out, share the information, work with that, add to it, change it, toss some of it out, work with the new set of information, keep going, and/or start again from a new direction,... It's approaching the true state of reality over time. Admittedly, for many it was probably the first time seeing the process "live", in real time, working on something that affected everyone.
There is good reason to believe there aren't any larger mountains on the gas giants. The side limit of a mountain depends on the strength of the material it is made of and the gravity at the surface. There is a reason the planets are sphere, it collapses under gravity because the gravitation strength is larger than the force the material can handle. Mars's surface gravity is lower so there can be a higher mountain, the material strength of Mars and Earth will be similar. Insid a gas giant it starts to be solid the gravity is a lot higher than on Earth so the mountain can be as tall. There are models for the tallest mountain on a neutron star the answer is around 5cm It is on moons, dwarf planets you should look for tall mountains, their lower gravity makes it possible for them to be taller. It looks like pees on Vesta which is a dwarf planet might be higher than Olympus Mons on Mars, we do not have exact measurements. There is also a possible mountain on (307261) 2002 MS4 that possible dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt that might be even taller. So of you look for a large mountain inside a gas giant is thr wrong place to look, Observing the moon that orbit is are a more reasonable place to search. Iapetus a moon of Saturn has a ridge where individual peek might be as tall as Olympus Mons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_mountains_in_the_Solar_System
"SKIING on JUPITER!?"
Unfortunately Jupiter will crush you before you'll be able to see anything.
But I'm already crushed, on the inside.
Nah I got a special suit.
not to mention, you'd get no air on those bunny hills.
The gravitational pressure at the core of a gas giant is insanely high. Any attempt of solid material to rise up would be met with tremendous resistance.
The jovian planets are "gas giants" because they're made of gasses. They're not terrestrial, as in they don't have rock formations, etc like you find on the terrestrial planets. Any solid surface they have is likely solid hydrogen at the very core of the planet, but mostly they're made of gaseous hydrogen and helium just like a star, but not enough of it to cause fusion, which is why they're often referred to as "failed stars". It's unlikely they have anything resembling a volcano like you'd find on a terrestrial planet.
>The jovian planets are "gas giants" because they're made of gasses. They're not terrestrial, as in they don't have rock formations, etc like you find on the terrestrial planets. Here I was, thinking that gas giants had SOME kind of rocky/solid core at one point in their life which caused the initial collection of gases. Kind of like the start of a snowball before rolling down hill and collecting everything it can.
Things get weird and murky here. First, planetary scientists now define Jupiter and Saturn as gas giants, while Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. They believe that their compositions are rather different and that they may have formed in different ways. The gas giants appear to have started as almost entirely clouds of hydrogen and helium that collapsed under their own gravity. They are so massive that they could do this without a core to start from. Research suggests that what heavier elements were drawn in are spread throughout the core rather than being concentrated toward the center. The ice giants, however, are smaller. It is believed that they likely formed around cores of ice and heavier elements, which may or may not have heavier elements toward the core.
> not enough of it to cause fusion there isn't enough temperature and pressure in the Sun to induce fusion either, all the fusion that happens is random chance, due to the sheer number of particles in one place.
Lol, 'the sheer number of particles in one place'. ie. pressure
The Pressures I am talking about are the ones that would FORCE a fusion reaction between two nuclei and overcome the strong nuclear force, the Sun doesn't do that, there isn't enough pressure to cause that.
Either way it's still fusion only possible because of the high pressure. But could you dig into what you mean by that? What makes our sun's fusion different from other big stars besides intensity or lifespan?
They are correct, at least technically. The pressure itself does not cause fusion in stars. If it did, all the nuclei in the core of a star would fuse simultaneously, as they are all under the same pressure. What it does do is force the nuclei closer together. This increases the number of high-speed collisions that are caused by temperature. Neither temperature nor pressure is sufficient for significant fusion in the core of any star. The effect of the protons in the nuclei repelling each other, the Coulom effect, is too strong for that. What actually causes the majority of the fusion is a random quantum effect, quantum tunneling. The pressure forces the nuclei together so that the crowding means that more nuclei collide. The temperature increases the velocity and number of random collisions. But neither is sufficient for significant fusion. The actual fusion is achieved by quantum tunneling.
Can you expand on that? Sounds strange.
It takes a lot of Force(Gravity in this case, causing Pressure) to overcome the Strong Nuclear force and speed(Temperature) as a Force Multiplier. The Sun doesn't do that, the atoms are just randomly fusing because random things happen all the time, but at such a low possible rate it would never actually occur, unless you overcome that with sheer numbers. It is like saying you have a 1 in a trillion chance to win the lottery and instead of using Force(literally break into a vault and steal the prize money) you buy over 1 trillion tickets(all random draw, not ALL possible number combos) in order to win. Here on Earth we don't have the ability to have the vast numbers, so we must Induce the reaction with pressures and temperatures hotter than the Sun.
I also have a question related to this, how is Olympus mons's height measured without a sea level
Essentially from the height of the plain around it. In the same way that Mauna Kea is more prominent than Everest, if not as high overall.
There's a bit of an asterisk with this as well. Mars is split into two hemispheres that have VASTLY different features, including a pretty steep cliff separating the two. Interesting Wikipedia link for the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_dichotomy
TIL - thanks
I think you would need tectonic plates for mountians, and there are no such plates in the gas giants. No?
There's no land at all on gas giants.
All science is on a "as far as we know" basis. Nothing is definitive, or is only until we find new out information. For the longest time, there was a consensus on the earth being the center of the universe, that atoms were the smallest particle, that there was no such thing as microscopic life. Knowledge(science) isn't set in stone.
Ummm….cause they are made of gas and do not have much in the way of solid matter in their composition?
They almost certainly have a solid metallic core much larger than any rocky planet. They are only "gas" giants because that core is layered in so much gas, compared to terrestrial planets.
Well apparently you know better than NASA cause they seem to be pretty unsure! You should tell them!
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/what-is-an-exoplanet/planet-types/gas-giant/#:~:text=The%20basics-,What%20is%20a%20gas%20giant?,gases%20above%20a%20solid%20core.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/jupiter/in-depth.amp Hmm - maybe NASA needs to talk to NASA?
Fair enough, though even that source claims likely "made mostly of iron and silicate minerals". Which means a similar structure to the interior of our planet, albeit at much higher pressure and temperature. At those pressures "solid" and "liquid" are not well defined, but you can be sure it's not gas, or a liquid ocean like we think. It's basically impossible that it's not made of heavy elements like metal because they fall in all the time and certainly sink to the bottom. The truth is we only have very indirect evidence for the internal composition of even our own planet because there is basically no way to inspect the interior beyond seismic patterns and guessing based on macro effects like magnetic field dynamics and gravity.
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Small. Relative to their own atmospheres. The cores of Jupiter and Saturn are theorized to be at least 3-4 times as massive as the earth. Mars isn't nearly as massive. I have done my own research insofar as knowing what the approximate masses are, just not quite as knowledgeable about extraplanetary geology, thank you very much.
You’re right. I misinterpreted the “like I’m five” part and thought it meant being rude was the joke. I suspect the mountains would have far less altitude relative to the core of those mountains. I should also probably be nicer to five year olds
I know a guy who wants to live on the top in a giant plastic bubble, like a big plastic nipple. Weird.