Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley
World class images.
I have a question. Jupiter is a gas giant so it is made out of various gases. So if something hits it, then that object is ploughing through various layers of gas until it gets low enough in Jupiters atmosphere that it hits liquid compressed gas? Like hitting Earth's oceans.
Jupiter has no rocky part right?
Its surprising then that the scar lasts as long as it has.
Greg.
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You're right there, Greg. Up to a point.....unless it was something very large (like >100km in size), an impacting body wouldn't get far enough down into Jupiter's atmosphere to hit the liquid body of the planet. The atmosphere is too thick (>1000km). Bodies the size of the largest impactor of SL9 (1-1.5km) would plough down probably 80-100kms, down to where the pressure was around x10 Earth normal. That would put it at the base of the cloud layers...just below the water clouds. It wouldn't go much further as the stress overloads on the structure of the impactor would exceed the strength of the materials it was made out of.
Even a 100km sized chunk of flotsam would have trouble getting down to the body of the planet as the pressure at the atmopshere/liquid body interface gets awfully high....around 1 million atmopsheres!!!. It'd be like plowing through ultradense treacle.
