Terrestrial Planets 2

- The “dynamo” that creates a magnetic field inside the Earth reverses itself every few
million years, taking about 7000 years to flip
- On Earth right now, the North Magnetic Pole is near the North Pole - but after the next
field reversal, the North Magnetic Pole will be near the South Pole
- The direction of the Earth's magnetic field can be ‘recorded’ in certain minerals as they
solidify out of molten lava
- Therefore, the history of a planet's magnetic field can be recorded as ‘stripes’ at ridges
where tectonic plates move apart
- Mars Global Surveyor data has shown that Mars has these magnetic field “stripes”;
therefore, Mars once had limited plate tectonic activity:

The aurora borealis (northern lights) from orbit:

- Mercury's slow rotation gives it the most extreme day/night/seasonal temperature

variations in the solar system
- Two definitions:
- A sidereal day is the time it takes for a planet to spin around 360 degrees
- A solar day is the time from noon to noon
- We can answer that question based on the lengths of the year and the sidereal day on
Mercury and Venus, and the following:
- Both planets orbit the Sun counterclockwise
- Mercury spins on its axis counterclockwise, but Venus spins clockwise

Jovian Planets: An Introduction

- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have massive gaseous atmospheres, so they are
often called gas giant planets, but because Jupiter dominates these planets, they are
also referred to as Jovian planets
- Different than terrestrial planets
- Bigger & more massive and more distant
- Jupiter and Saturn are usually visible to the naked eye and have been
known since prehistory
- Uranus discovered by William Herschel in 1781; was nearly named
‘Georgium Sidus’ after King George 3
- Uranus did not follow an exact elliptical orbit around the Sun, meaning it
was being affected by another planet’s gravity
- In 1846, Johann Galle found Neptune just where it has been
(independently) predicted to be by Adams and Leverrier
- Lower density, different composition
- Rings
- Numerous moon
- Primarily consists of Hydrogen and Helium
- Extremely low temperatures
- You can’t land on a Jovian planet
- All we see directly are Jovian planet atmospheres; different atmospheric layers →
different colours
- Beneath their atmospheres are layers of high-pressure high temperature liquids (gas →
liquid → molten core): Earth’s surface: 1 atmosphere; ocean floor: 500 atm. Jupiter gas-
liquid boundary: 10 atm; liquid-core boundary: 3 million atm; core: 50 million atm.
- How do we know? Theoretical models, diamond anvil studies in Earth labs,
equatorial bulges (oblateness) from fast rotation rates, magnetic fields
- Saturn rotates so fast it bulges out at its equator; all planets show this effect, but only in
saturn is it really obvious
- Uranus and Neptune (sometimes called ice giants) are denser than Saturn (a gas giant)
because they have proportionately less hydrogen and helium than Saturn does
- But that explanation doesn’t work for Jupiter, for Jupiter, more mass → more gravity → more
compression → denser
- Jovian planet formation in the solar nebula explains different densities/compositions
- Near the center of the nebula, planetesimals only formed from rock and metal
(too hot for ice!)
- Farther out, planetesimals also accumulated ice
- Ice is more common than rocks and metals, so jovian planet cores got bigger
than terrestrial planets, with gravity enough to attract hydrogen (H) and helium
(He) gas
- Accretion was faster closer to the nebula’s center, so Jupiter and Saturn are
more massive and have more H and He than Uranus and Neptune
- What is the weather like on jovian planet
- Colourful surface features reveal:
- Clouds of different compositions
 - Wind speeds
- Storms, some long-lived
- Jupiter winds and storms
- Earth’s rotation makes storms ‘spin’
- Jupiter’s fast rotation stretches storms in to bands that surround the planet
- High east/west winds (up to 400km/h)
- Storms on the other Jovian planets
- Saturn: Even faster winds
- Neptune: Can see storms, but not as long lived
- Uranus: Dull when voyager 2 flew by, but Hubble space telescope captured
major storms
- Extreme tilt of its spin axis means that Uranus’ south pole has only
recently emerged out of a sunless winter that lasted decades, and at its
North pole, winter is coming…
- What powers storms on Jovian planets
- Sunlight powers storms on Earth
- Jupiter is 5 times as far from the Sun as the Earth is, so Jupiter receives 25 times
less sunlight than the Earth
- If you move X times farther away from the Sun, you receive a factor of X squared
less sunlight (X*X) [the area of a sphere increases as the radius squared]
- Saturn: 10x farther from Sun; 100x less sunlight
- Uranus: 20x farther from Sun; 400x less sunlight
- Neptune: 30x farther from Sun; 900x less sunlight
- There's too little solar energy available to power the convection that creates
observed jovian planet storms. Additional heat sources for Jovian planet storms?
- Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune radiate more heat than they receive from the Sun
- They are still cooling off from their formation 4.5 billion years ago!
- Jupiter: insulated by its large size.
- Saturn: helium still slowly sinking to centre (differentiation) and releasing energy
- Neptune: insulated by its large methane content?
- Uranus: storms driven by extreme seasonal changes, rather than internal heat.
- In 1994, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 [yes, these two amateur astronomers have
found 9 comets together] passed close enough to Jupiter that Jupiter's gravity
tore it apart into dozens of fragments
- What we learned / main points
- The jovian planets have layered interiors with very high temperatures and
pressures.
- Jupiter and Saturn have thick layers of hydrogen and helium that dominate their
masses
- Uranus and Neptune have layers of hydrogen and helium of about equal mass to
their cores
- All four planets started from ice-rich cores of about the same size (~10 Earth
masses of metals, rock and ices) but captured different amounts of hydrogen and
helium gas from the solar nebula, depending on the density of the nebula at their
location in it