Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • The best way to explore a new world is to land on it.

  • That's why humans have sent spacecrafts to the Moon, Venus, Mars, Saturn's moon Titan, and more.

  • But there are a few places in the solar system we will never understand as well as we'd like.

  • One of them is Jupiter.

  • Jupiter is made of mostly hydrogen and helium gas, so trying to land on it would be like trying to land on a cloud here on Earth.

  • There's no outer crust to break your fall on Jupiter, just an endless stretch of atmosphere.

  • The big question then is: Could you fall through one end of Jupiter and out the other?

  • Turns out, you wouldn't even make it halfway.

  • First things first, Jupiter's atmosphere has no oxygen, so make sure you bring plenty with you to breathe.

  • The next problem is the scorching temperatures, so pack an air conditioner.

  • Now, you're ready for a journey of epic proportions.

  • For scale, here's how many Earths you could stack from Jupiter's center.

  • As you enter the top of the atmosphere, you're traveling at 110,000 miles per hour under the pull of Jupiter's gravity.

  • But brace yourself.

  • You'll quickly hit the denser atmosphere below, which will hit you like a wall.

  • It won't be enough to stop you, though.

  • After about 3 minutes, you'll reach the cloud tops 155 miles down.

  • Here, you'll experience the full brunt of Jupiter's rotation.

  • Jupiter is actually the fastest rotating planet in our solar system.

  • One day lasts about 9 and a half Earth hours.

  • This creates powerful winds that can whip around the planet at more than 300 miles per hour.

  • About 75 miles below the clouds, you reach the limit of human exploration.

  • Galileo probe made it this far when it dove into Jupiter's atmosphere in 1995.

  • It only lasted 58 minutes before losing contact and was eventually destroyed by the crushing pressure.

  • Down here, the pressure is nearly 100 times what it is on Earth's surface, and you won't be able to see anything,

  • so you'll have to rely on instruments to explore your surroundings.

  • By 430 miles down, the pressure is 1,150 times higher.

  • You might be able to survive down here if you were in a spacecraft built like the Trieste submarine, the deepest-diving submarine on Earth.

  • Any deeper and the pressure and the temperature will be too great for the spacecraft to endure.

  • However, let's say that you could find a way to descend even further.

  • You will uncover some of Jupiter's grandest mysteries.

  • But sadly, you'll have no way to tell anyone.

  • Jupiter's deep atmosphere absorbs radio waves, so you'd be shut off from the outside world, unable to communicate.

  • Once you've reached 2,500 miles down, the temperature is 6,100 degrees Fahrenheit.

  • That's hot enough to melt tungsten, the metal with the highest melting point in the universe.

  • At this point, you will have been falling for at least 12 hours, and you won't even be halfway through.

  • At 13,000 miles down, you'll reach Jupiter's innermost layer.

  • Here, the pressure is two million times stronger than that of Earth's surface, and the temperature is hotter than the surface of the Sun.

  • These conditions are so extreme that they change the chemistry of hydrogen around you.

  • Hydrogen molecules are forced so close together that their electrons break loose, forming an unusual substance called metallic hydrogen.

  • Metallic hydrogen is highly reflective.

  • So if you tried using lights to see down there, it would be impossible, and it's as dense as a rock.

  • So, as you travel deeper, the buoyancy force from the metallic hydrogen counteracts gravity's downward pull.

  • Eventually, that buoyancy will shoot you back up until gravity pulls you right back down, sort of like a yo-yo.

  • And when those two forces equal, you'll be left free-floating in mid-Jupiter, unable to move up or down, and no way of escape.

  • Suffice it to say, trying to land on Jupiter is a bad idea.

  • We may never see what's beneath those majestic clouds.

  • But we can still study and admire this mysterious planet from afar.

The best way to explore a new world is to land on it.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it