.... by whom also he made the worlds; Hebrews 1:2
"Leigh Fletcher from the University of Leicester says at The Conversation,
What wrong things is Fletcher excited about this time?
--First, he says, the ammonia in Jupiter’s atmosphere was expected to be well mixed. “That idea has been turned on its head – the ammonia concentration is much less than expected.”
Expected by whom?
--Another surprise is that Jupiter’s famous bands extend much deeper than “expected” by atmospheric scientists. Fletcher continues,
--There is no solid core at Jupiter, apparently. Although no one can see what’s down there, new evidence suggests the presence of a “fluffy” core that extends halfway out from the center. That’s very, very different from the earth-sized solid core textbooks told us about for decades.
--And Jupiter’s magnetic field—strongest among the planets—also surprised the team, being formed much shallower than theory predicts. “If proven, this has substantial implications for studies of magnetic fields at all of the giant planets.”
In the last paragraph, Fletcher explains why he is excited by being so wrong:
CEH
"Leigh Fletcher from the University of Leicester says at The Conversation,
Ten months after its nerve-wracking arrival at Jupiter, NASA’s Juno mission has started to deliver – forcingA long time ago, planetary scientists learned a way to shield their embarrassment at being wrong. They learned to call being wrong “exciting”.
scientists to reevaluate what they thought they knew about the giant planet. The first findings from Juno, published in Science, indicate that many aspects of Jupiter have defied expectation – including the strength of its magnetic field, the shape of its core, the distribution of ammonia gas and the weather at its poles. It certainly makes this an exciting time to be a Jupiter scientist.
What wrong things is Fletcher excited about this time?
--First, he says, the ammonia in Jupiter’s atmosphere was expected to be well mixed. “That idea has been turned on its head – the ammonia concentration is much less than expected.”
Expected by whom?
--Another surprise is that Jupiter’s famous bands extend much deeper than “expected” by atmospheric scientists. Fletcher continues,
This is much deeper than what we’ve generally thought of as Jupiter’s “weather layer” in the upper few tens of kilometres. What’s more, that structure isn’t the same all the way down – it varies with depth, indicating a large, complex circulation pattern.And the surprises didn’t stop there.
--There is no solid core at Jupiter, apparently. Although no one can see what’s down there, new evidence suggests the presence of a “fluffy” core that extends halfway out from the center. That’s very, very different from the earth-sized solid core textbooks told us about for decades.
--And Jupiter’s magnetic field—strongest among the planets—also surprised the team, being formed much shallower than theory predicts. “If proven, this has substantial implications for studies of magnetic fields at all of the giant planets.”
In the last paragraph, Fletcher explains why he is excited by being so wrong:
You might imagine that, faced with throwing out models that have taken careers to develop, scientists might be aIs this a fire insurance policy? No matter how much wrong the models prove to be, they can call it “deeper insight” and keep their jobs."
little glum. But the exact opposite is true. A mission like Juno, accessing regions that no robotic spacecraft has ever probed before, is designed to test the models to the extreme. If they break, then the search to find the missing pieces of the puzzle will provide deeper insights into the physics of the Jovian system. All these surprises have come from just the first perijove encounter, and I’m sure there are plenty more revelations to come.
CEH