An Israeli-American study has solved a mystery: why the big planets like Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune are wrapped in a "striped shirt"
The clouds, the transverse stripes, of the planet Jupiter are desirable
Alex Doron
A long-standing mystery - how the big planets like Jupiter and Saturn got their stripes
their characteristic transversals - has now been resolved, in a study done in Israel and the USA.
With the help of a computer, scientists formulated the mathematical law that explains the unique appearance of
These great planets. Until now, there were only hypotheses about this phenomenon.
The data for building the mathematical model was provided to the research team from NASA - processing from photographs
The spacecraft Voyager, Cassini and the Hubble Space Telescope, which "peeked" into the depths of space. the data
"Dress" well on the mathematical model, and confirm it.
Dr. Semyon Sokoriansky, senior lecturer in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the university
Ben-Gurion in the Negev, who specializes in the study of eddies and flows, together with his research assistant,
Nadezhda Dikovsky, and their colleague, Dr. Boris Galperin from the University of South Florida
engaged in the study of currents in the oceans, published their work in the leading journal in physics
Modern, "Physical Review Letters". Also the Journal of the American Institute of Physics (AIP)
And the news site of the space agency NASA, reported on it.
like a carousel
In an exclusive conversation with Maariv, Dr. Sokoriansky explained: "We focused on the planet Jupiter,
The largest of the planets in our solar system - but the stripes are also seen in three of his 'brothers', Saturn,
Neptune and Uranus are all gas giants very far away from us. These are planets
Spherical, rotating on their axis, like a top. in the upper layers of the atmosphere
In them, there are tremendous currents, eddies and wind jets, storms that form clouds
big Because of the oscillations, the flows are organized around the planets in bands,
transversality.
In the Earth's atmosphere, similar turbulent activity is caused by the sun's energy - ala
which is very strong: the heat coming from the sun causes a strong mixing of the air. It's a phenomenon
The turbulence. This mixing, along with the friction of the atmosphere against the Earth, destroys the
The orderly flow and do not allow to create the stripes.
The four gas giants are too far from the Sun. Neptune, for example, only gets the thousandth
Of the solar energy reaching the Earth and Jupiter - about 4 percent. And yet: the flows around
The four gas giants, mighty. Paradoxically: their strength increases as the planet grows
Rather farther.
For example: the speeds of the jets in Neptune reach about 400 meters per second. The clouds are captured
inside the jets that drag them - and this is what creates the characteristic streaks. flows
The jet is very stable. The scientists did not notice that there had been changes for hundreds of years
any significant in the striated structure of Jupiter's atmosphere. Even a dramatic event
On a cosmic scale - the collision of comet "Shoemaker-Levy" 9 with the planet Jupiter in 1994
did not affect him.
The mathematical model we built, noted Dr. Sokoriansky, is designed to provide an explanation for the phenomenon. from him
rise, forget it is the sibsov of the planets that determines the nature of the unique organization of
The jet flows: in transverse strips.
Another important factor is the size of the energy dispersion: although the atmospheres in the planets
The most distant, receive less energy from the sun, they scatter it less and keep it
her for themselves. The phenomenon explains why, of all four gas giants, faraway Neptune
And the coldest - the strongest atmospheric vortex. The little energy that this planet has
Perceives, accumulates over hundreds of years and organizes under the influence of the Sibsov force, in the jet flows.
The division of energy
The same jet flow occurs in the Earth's atmosphere. It allows, for example, to shorten
About an hour and a half the flight from the USA to Israel compared to the flight time in the opposite direction. intensity
The flow is less powerful than the one around the aforementioned planets, not only because of energy
the sun but also due to the friction of the flows, the surface of the land and the seas. damage to a mountain range,
For example, destroying the orderly flow.
"An important theoretical part of this work, Dr. Sokoriansky explained, is that we discovered a law
Energy distribution between different sizes of the jets. The law allows an assessment of intensity
The vortex in the atmosphere of every gaseous planet. It also provides tools for testing the model. Law
The distribution of energies, which we formulated in the mathematical model, corresponded exactly to the measurements of
The flow velocities in all four giant planets".
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