THE decades-old mystery of how Jupiter produces a burst of X-rays every few minutes has been solved by scientists.
The X-rays are part of the giant planet’s aurora – bursts of visible and invisible light that occur when charged particles interact with the planet’s atmosphere.
While a similar phenomenon occurs on Earth, creating the northern lights, Jupiter’s is much more powerful.
It releases hundreds of gigawatts of energy, enough to briefly power all of human civilisation, researchers say.
Researchers combined close-up observations of Jupiter’s environment by Nasa’s satellite Juno, which is currently orbiting the planet, with simultaneous X-ray measurements from the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton observatory (which is in Earth’s own orbit).
The team discovered that X-ray flares were triggered by periodic vibrations of Jupiter’s magnetic field lines.
These vibrations create waves of plasma (ionised gas) that send heavy ion particles “surfing” along magnetic field lines until they smash into the planet’s atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of X-rays.
Co-lead author Dr William Dunn, UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said: “We have seen Jupiter producing X-ray aurora for four decades, but we didn’t know how this happened. We only knew they were produced when ions crashed into the planet’s atmosphere.
“Now we know these ions are transported by plasma waves – an explanation that has not been proposed before, even though a similar process produces Earth’s own aurora.
“It could, therefore, be a universal phenomenon, present across many different environments in space.”
The planet’s X-ray auroras are at its north and south poles, often with clockwork regularity.
During the study observation, Jupiter was producing bursts of X-rays every 27 minutes.
According to the study published in Science Advances, the charged ion particles that hit the atmosphere originate from volcanic gas pouring into space from giant volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon, Io.
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