Jool's Surface

[tjacobhi]

After crashing on the flat surface of Jool enough times, I have come to wonder, what would Jool, and also any other future implemented gas giant, be like if they had instead a small rock core such as the size of Dres or even Gilly... The core of Jupiter is thought to have a rocky or icy core. Maybe Jool does have a rocky core, but the gas becomes too thick for a spacecraft to go through so it crashes at ASL of 0. I'm interested in what others think about the core of KSP gas giants.

[Ghost13]

Whatever you think about the core in the gas giants the landing on any is as impossible as landing on the sun. There are simply no materials that can deal with enormous pressure and temperature inside the gas giant such as Jupiter, Saturn or Jool. The current 20.1 game mechanic allow you to put something on the surface of Jool, some times it even don’t explode, but actually it should not, any craft you put into gas giant will implode first and then remains will evaporate into gas. I think that game should implement some borderline say 50 km of height where craft simply explode the same way as it do with the surface of the Kerbol. And "imploded by the outside pressure" or something similar should be stated in the end of the flight report.

[tjacobhi]

Makes sense. You would probably need carbon nano-tubes, not easy to produce in real life, to handle the stress of the atmosphere, then add the temperature, I see your point. I'm a scuba diver, so I understand how fast pressures can increase the deeper you get into fluids, so I am surprised I didn't think of that before posting... I would like to see the "surface" deeper into the planet and have the atmosphere incredibly thick, I like the idea of imploding while getting deep. It may even be better than having a surface.

[goldfang35]

In my opinion they should remake gas giants into being able to jump into them with the right materials and also a very skilled pilot. On jupiter there are winds of over 300 miles an hour and humongous tornadoes and storms however it is believed to have a liquid ocean underneath it followed by a ice/rock core if they would make them traversible i would be a happy guy

[lajoswinkler]

Planetary geologists must've been drunk when they invented their system for classification of materials because they've made an incredible mess so far that every rational scientist should've predicted would happen.

Jupiter doesn't have a core made of rocks.

Rock means iron, nickel, silicates, oxides, etc. It means the type of material, in this case heavy nonvolatiles with high melting points.

The center of all planetary giants is a highly compressed plasma made of the same stuff as Earth or any terrestrial planet is made of.

No surface to land on. No pebbles, no stones.

[goldfang35]

That is not true jupiter doesnt have nearly enough gas in it to have such a big gravitational influence and also be so big it is not strange that it would have a rocky core it might even have a molten core for all we know but two things are certain jupiter has a rocky core and it has a sea underneath the clouds since there are so many cloud on jupiter temperatures could be high enough to have some sort of liquid and where there is liquid there is probably life that is whats so interesting about jupiter

[softweir]

It ought to be possible for a hot-air balloon to float in Jupiter's atmosphere and stay high enough that pressure isn't a problem, but getting one there in one piece is a whole different matter, given the extremely high atmospheric entry speed caused by Jupiter's massive gravity. Pretty much the same would be true for Jool.

I think the best we can reasonably expect is short-lifespan probes (equipped with massive heat-shields) that enter the atmosphere of Jool and transmit data in the short time before the pressure destroys them.

[frizzank]

The density of a gas giant increases with depth, there is no surface or liquid oceans as you may think of it. Jool is just a weird soup that gets thicker the further you go down.

I do like the idea of floating in the atmosphere with some sort of air ship.

[KvickFlygarn87]

That is not true jupiter doesnt have nearly enough gas in it to have such a big gravitational influence and also be so big it is not strange that it would have a rocky core it might even have a molten core for all we know but two things are certain jupiter has a rocky core and it has a sea underneath the clouds since there are so many cloud on jupiter temperatures could be high enough to have some sort of liquid and where there is liquid there is probably life that is whats so interesting about jupiter

Are you high or just stupid? Jupiter does not have a rocky core. A rocky core would be impossible at the sort of temperatures we are dealing with here. And life on Jupiter? What? It can't be possible for life to exist in the sea of Jupiter, even

if there was one. [/rant]

[softweir]

Chill out. There's no need to get so hot about such things.

Jupiter can't have rocks as we would recognise them, but any silicon, carbon, iron etc that were in its atmosphere would be crushed so dense that they would aggregate into a lump at the centre of Jupiter. And yes, they would have to drop through the liquid, metal "sea" of hydrogen, but at those pressures they would be dense enough to do so. If that doesn't count as "a rocky core", I don't know what does.

[goldfang35]

now then let me teach you some "science" Jupiter is made up of mostly helium and hydrogen making the planet "star like" now then Jupiter has humongous pressure and gravity. Now then when you compress hydrogen into a small enough space it creates "liquid hydrogen" there are other ways of making liquid hydrogen but this is one way. also a "rocky core" doesn't involve being made out of basalt or granite or any other type of rock when you say a "rock" in scientific terms it can range from "normal rock" to iron nickel ect.. now then gasses tend not to be very heavy even if there is a lot of it. it is very hard for it to come together. If there is too much it turns into a star if it isn't enough it turns into nothing and if its in between it turns into a brown dwarf. Modern theory suggests that a normal earth sized planet attracted or even stole some gas from its parent star. Accual calculations suggest that if there was only gas to begin with first of all Jupiter wouldn't be as big as it is and secondly it is very rare that high enough concentrations of gas were left around when the star was formed. This cant be a rare phenomena as there are 2 gas giants in our solar system and there are gas giants in every solar system(almost). my last proof is the materials in the clouds of jupiter there are much heavier elements in the clouds other then helium and hydrogen if it was made out of gas completely planet collision wouldnt have been possible thus the high amount of other resources in the clouds of jupiter would be impossible as a planet would just pass through it and leave very little resources

Edited October 9, 2013 by FEichinger
removed harassment

[KvickFlygarn87]

Wow, did I just start WW3? Seriously though, I looked it up, and you were right about that it is most likely a solid core and has a massive amount of liquid. The liquid is metallic liquid hydrogen.

However, I was right about life. You said "and where there is liquid there is probably life". No. Life could not possibly exist at the pressure and temperature needed for liquidification of hydrogen.

Also, I shouldn't have called you high or stupid, and it wasn't cool of you to call me utter retard either. I've had a long day, and I just had to blow of some steam. Sorry to have hit you with it.

Kvick

[lajoswinkler]

That is not true jupiter doesnt have nearly enough gas in it to have such a big gravitational influence and also be so big it is not strange that it would have a rocky core it might even have a molten core for all we know but two things are certain jupiter has a rocky core and it has a sea underneath the clouds since there are so many cloud on jupiter temperatures could be high enough to have some sort of liquid and where there is liquid there is probably life that is whats so interesting about jupiter

Wow, did I just start WW3? Seriously though, I looked it up, and you were right about that it is most likely a solid core and has a massive amount of liquid. The liquid is metallic liquid hydrogen.

However, I was right about life. You said "and where there is liquid there is probably life". No. Life could not possibly exist at the pressure and temperature needed for liquidification of hydrogen.

Also, I shouldn't have called you high or stupid, and it wasn't cool of you to call me utter retard either. I've had a long day, and I just had to blow of some steam. Sorry to have hit you with it.

Kvick

There is no sea on Jupiter. There is no classic solid state core in the center.

Jupiter is a ball of supercritical fluid hydrogen and helium that gets so compressed it starts conducting electricity. The core contains heavy elements (the sole reason it's called "rocky") in supercompressed plasma state. Whether it's hard or not, it's not known, but it probably isn't because it's too hot to allow the existence of atoms. Computer simulations indicate that metallic supercritical hydrogen and helium might have dissolved some of the constituents of the initial heavy compounds (silicates, metals) in the core, but no other evidence is available.

This is a phase diagram of helium.

Its critical point is 5.19 kelvin and 227 kPa. However high the pressure excerted on it becomes, it will never turn to a proper liquid above 5.19 K. It will only get more dense, with properties between liquid and a gas.

Hydrogen is very similar with critical point at 33.20 K and 1300 kPa.

That's why there are no oceans on Jupiter. There is no proper boundary that would be capable of sloshing if something would disturb it.

Edited October 10, 2013 by lajoswinkler

[PGKiipper]

That is not true jupiter doesnt have nearly enough gas in it to have such a big gravitational influence and also be so big it is not strange that it would have a rocky core it might even have a molten core for all we know but two things are certain jupiter has a rocky core and it has a sea underneath the clouds since there are so many cloud on jupiter temperatures could be high enough to have some sort of liquid and where there is liquid there is probably life that is whats so interesting about jupiter

It doesnt even matter if its a rocky/molten/plasma/etc core, the conditions before the core are so extreme that any complex molecule cannot be formed...Why? Metallic Hydrogen is the answer. Its state will "dissolve" anything that comes close enough.

Just to simplify things: Gas giants are "almost the same" compared to stars. Jupiter produces more heat than it receives from the sun and if it were 70-80 times more mass, it could use hydrogen to produce energy just like our sun. Brown dwarfves are failed stars. Just because a planet has liquid, it doesnt mean its like our ocean and it doesnt mean its composed by water. It has a "ocean of metallic hydrogen...thats pretty much bad for life, considering that some conditions must exist to allow important chemical reactions to happen.

(temperature = 10.000K, pressure = 1974000 atm)

[VelocityPolaris]

So, what is the surface gravity on Jool? KSP wiki has a page, but it lists the surface gravity as the same as Laythe's, which can't be right. Can anyone send at probe or something to find out?

[Hyakkidouran]

I remember reading a novel about explorers who discovered life forms in the atmosphere of a gas giant, but it was 1)not life as we know it and 2)fiction. XD

Some people need to go back to geology class : the center of the Earth (which is far less massive than a gas giant) is so hot that stone behaves like a fluid. Despite the high pressure, it's just too hot to allow the existence of solid matter. If earth is already like this, just imagine how Jupiter is...

I think Ghost13's suggestion is how the game should handle this. When a spacecraft goes under a certain altitude, just have it be destroyed automatically and give us a different text message. no need for anything more complicated.

[NERVAfan]

Some people need to go back to geology class : the center of the Earth (which is far less massive than a gas giant) is so hot that stone behaves like a fluid. Despite the high pressure, it's just too hot to allow the existence of solid matter.

Actually, the center of the Earth - the inner core - is indeed solid; it's the outer core that is liquid. (And the core is mostly metal, not rock.)

Having solid phases at really high pressure/temperature isn't that odd; it's the liquid and gas that go away and become a supercritical fluid.

Stars' cores are plasma, yeah, but they aren't just heat+pressure, they have the outward radiation pressure from the fusion holding them up against gravity. When the fusion stops they compress into electron-degenerate matter (a white dwarf) or the even weirder stuff that a neutron star's made of.

[stupid_chris]

Old thread is old, conversation dead.

VelocityPolaris: it is right, the surface gravity of Jool is 0.8G. Remember the gravitational force depends on the mass of the center body and the distance from it'S center. In this case, distance from center is important.

This said, thread closed.