WEBVTT - The Great Eye of Jupiter, Part 2 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:15.280 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:15.920 is Robert. 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:17.599 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.200 We are back with our second episode on the Great 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:26.920 Red Spot of Jupiter, and in the last episode we'll 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:28.320 get to sort of a rundown of what we talked 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:29.920 about last time. But one of the things we did 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:32.560 mention a few different times is how Jupiter does show 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:37.280 up in science fiction, oftentimes just as a backdrop, sometimes 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:41.360 in a more plot oriented fashion. But I was looking 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:44.200 around because I'm like, Okay, if I dive deeper into 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:48.760 written fiction, I'm sure there's some great hardcore Jupiter sci 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.960 fi that references the spot. And sure enough, there's a 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:58.600 novella from Let's See nineteen seventy one, I believe the 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:03.000 original version of it published in Playboy magazine, and it's 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:05.840 set in the year twenty fifty. It is titled A 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:08.840 Meeting with Medusa by the legendary Arthur C. Clark. 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:12.240 Oh yeah, huge jellyfish in the atmosphere of Jupiter. This 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:14.560 is sort of this is an airship story, isn't it 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:14.920 It is? 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:17.520 Yeah, this is a This is a pretty famous one. 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:20.240 I've never read it, which is why it didn't, you know, 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:22.800 come to my mind immediately, and we may have referenced 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:23.920 it on the show in the past, but it was 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:27.560 a big one, was a Nebula Award winner, highly influential tale. 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:30.560 I wish I'd had a chance to read it in 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:33.720 full ahead of our recording, but I did go through 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.240 it and look for references to the Great Red Spot, 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:38.040 and there are actually a couple of them. Is kind 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:41.160 of bookended because I believe on the way in our 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:45.480 main character is sort of pining for a visit to 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:49.360 the Great Red Spot, and then later when he leaves, he's, 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:51.720 you know, he feels kind of bittersweet about it and thinks, well, 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:53.160 maybe I'll see it next time. 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:55.640 Now, this is in no way meant as a criticism 0:01:55.680 --> 0:01:58.680 of the story, but this did cause me to think, 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:01.560 with the Great Red sp feel like the Great Red 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:03.800 Spot if you were in it instead of looking at 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:07.520 it from above. You know. Yeah, it's like imagining wanting 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:10.720 to go to an island, because the island is shaped 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:13.639 like something when seen from orbit, but like when you're 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:15.639 on the island, it wouldn't be shaped that way. You'd 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:17.120 just be on land. 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:19.240 Yeah, Like I love the shape of Australia. I really 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:22.119 want to visit it somedays so I can appreciate its shape. 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:24.600 But then again, I'm sure the Great Red Spot, like 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:27.440 you know, like many things on Jupiter, would be, would 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:31.040 have fascinating local characteristics as well. It just wouldn't be 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:33.840 a Great Red Spot anymore. It would be whatever, I 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:35.320 don't know, winds whipping around you. 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:38.679 So this, this story can be obtained, I've believe in 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:43.520 at least in one major Arthur C. Clark collection, And certainly 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:45.080 go out and read it and fall right into us 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:46.680 if you have read in full, if you have thoughts 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:48.880 on it. But I want to read one quick passage 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:52.520 from it that references the Great Red Spot. Quote. The 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:55.720 Great Red Spot itself, the most spectacular of all the 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:59.200 planet's features, lay thousands of miles to the south. It 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.000 had been a tempte to descend there, but the South 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.959 Tropical Disturbance was unusually active, with currents reaching over nine 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.400 hundred miles an hour. It would have been asking for 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:12.120 trouble to head into that maelstrom of unknown forces. The 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:14.880 Great Red Spot and its mysteries would have to wait 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:16.760 for future expeditions. 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:19.640 Wow, what a coincidence. I'm actually going to end up 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:22.799 in this episode talking about the South Tropical disturbance. That's 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:26.200 not a thing made up for the Arthur C. Clark story. 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:26.959 That's a real thing. 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:32.000 Yeah. And it's also I mean like how he's acknowledging 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:34.679 the mysteries of the Great Red Spot, because as we've 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.480 been discussing, there are plenty of mysteries that still remain about. 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:42.960 It, absolutely aside from any giant jellyfish or manta rays 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:43.600 dwelling there. 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:48.200 Yeah. So we're back to continue our discussion of the 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:50.800 Great Red Spot of Jupiter, a massive storm visible from 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:55.040 Earth by telescope. In the last episode, we discussed the 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:58.480 history of the spots observation in the telescopic age, beginning 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.760 in the seventeenth century and then with greatly improved imaging 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.880 capabilities in the twentieth century and beyond. We discussed how 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:08.160 the Great Red Storm we know today might not be 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.120 the storm that Giovanni Cassini noted in sixteen sixty five, 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:16.240 and how the storm is long lasting compared to terrestrial storms, 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.680 but still a temporary atmospheric feature in the life cycle 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:21.719 of a planet, so it won't be there forever but 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:23.320 we don't know when it will go away. 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:27.040 So regarding the observations in the eighteen hundreds, I don't 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:30.000 recall if this came up in the last episode. You 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:32.479 can remind me if I've forgotten this, Rob, but I 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:35.800 actually found out that there was a photo, a telescopic 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:39.280 photo of the Great Red Spot taken of Jupiter in 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:43.920 the nineteenth century. It was taken by Irish astronomer Agnes 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:48.440 Mary Clerk in eighteen seventy nine, and Rob I attached 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:50.320 a copy of this black and white photo for you 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:51.400 to look at in the outline. 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:51.599 Here. 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.320 You don't get a lot of definition on the various 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:56.520 bands going back and forth like you see in the 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:59.760 good color photos of Jupiter today. Mainly it looks like 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:03.240 one sort of light gray ball with a big dark 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:07.279 stripe in the middle and then just a huge, gigantic 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:12.159 elongated oval on one side of the equatorial stripe. And 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:15.960 apparently at the time this photo was taken, it was 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:19.440 estimated that the Great Red Spot was about forty thousand 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:24.000 kilometers in length, so much bigger and much more elongated 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:25.880 than it is today. That goes with what we were 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:29.039 saying last time about the Great Red Spot. Shrinking and 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:32.200 becoming rounder over time, and these observations more than one 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.240 hundred years ago, it was gigantic and it was way 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:36.440 more flattened out. 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:41.160 Yeah, definitely look up this eighteen seventy nine photograph if 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:43.919 you have the ability to do so. Let's see. We 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.800 also discussed the nature of the storm itself, somewhat an 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:50.520 enormous anticyclone that dwarfs not only any storm we've ever 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:53.720 known on Earth, but the Earth itself. And in this 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:57.599 episode we're back to discuss more facts, observations, and hypotheses 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:00.720 concerning the Great Red Spot and the planet calls Home. 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:03.960 So Rob, one of the questions we raised last time 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:07.120 that we didn't really get into was the question of 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:11.080 why the Great Red Spot is red and not some 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:14.440 other color. Of course, though we did briefly allude to 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:18.159 the fact that it's sort of a mix of different areas. Right, 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:21.400 There's an outer ring that's sort of like clear or 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:24.120 white that is sometimes known as the hollow, and then 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:27.479 inside that you've got the redder or more orange oval. 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:30.520 Yeah, that's right. We talked about its greatness, but not 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:33.880 its redness so much. I want to discredit a couple 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:36.599 of hypotheses real quick. First of all, the Great Red 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:39.880 Spot is not the jelly insertion point on a planet 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:43.320 that is, in essence, one gigantic jelly filled donut. I 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:45.520 think this would be a reasonable guess to make, but 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:46.440 it's not true. 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:48.600 Even when you're talking about a real life donut. You 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:52.560 just don't like thinking about the jelly insertion point, don't 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:54.640 You just want to imagine it somehow in there without 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:55.120 a needle. 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:58.280 You know, it was violently injected. They don't even try 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:01.080 and hide it. That's how you know what's inside, and 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:02.560 maybe they feel like they're doing you a favor. 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:05.320 You get a little peak with the durbble. 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:08.839 Yeah, it's also not, as my child suggested this morning, 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:13.080 the vast swirlings of trillions upon trillions of tabby cats. 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:17.400 This was their Joe guests. Their serious guests, by the way, 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:20.720 was that it was red tinted chemicals in the Jovian atmosphere, 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.560 which we'll get back to it. That's a pretty good guess. 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:28.000 But as we did talk about in the last episode, yeah, 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.320 the Great Red Spot is not entirely one color, and 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:36.160 its overall colorization and contrast has shifted quite a bit. 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:40.400 As we mentioned seventeenth century observations of this or more 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.440 likely a previous storm did not know the spot's color, 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:47.240 as it was not detectable if that color was present. 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:51.520 But by and large, we've seen the following trends in 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:54.520 its overall color, and I got these from a couple 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:57.960 of different sources that we also cited last time. Historical 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:00.480 and contemporary trends in the size drift in color of 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:03.800 Jupiter's Great Red Spot by Simon Etol from twenty eighteen 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:08.280 and colors of Jupiter's large anticyclones and the interaction of 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:10.840 a tropical red oval with the Great Red Spot in 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:14.520 two thousand and eight by Sanchez Lavega at all, and 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:16.920 I'll look at some more recent observations as well, and 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.679 a couple of other sources. But in nineteen seventy four, 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:23.960 this is when Pioneer one and two went by striking 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:29.600 red colorization twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, there was an intensification, 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:33.960 a deeper orange color twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, further darkening. 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:36.480 And we have to stress that in none of these 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:40.040 cases are we talking about only changes in color, but 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:46.720 also various changes in dimension, intensity, morphology, and brightness. So 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:50.640 a lot of the analysis ends up getting into like, Okay, 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:52.679 we can look at the color and the color intensity, 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:55.520 but then we can attempt to chart out where that 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:58.840 those changes match up with other changes and looking to 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:02.960 why those changes would in fact impact the colorization. The 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:05.640 paper by Simon at All points out some of these 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:08.920 following facts I want to run through. They write that 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:12.640 the grs's color changes from twenty fourteen to twenty seventeen 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:17.480 may be explained by changes and stretching of vorticity or 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:22.760 divergence acting to balance the decrease in relative vorticity. Historically, 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:25.520 they point out, intensity of the Great Red Spot's color 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:29.400 appeared to be somewhat correlated with motion. The color was 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:33.000 more intense or it was darkest when it accelerated. Color 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:35.560 and drift rate also historically seemed to correlate. 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:38.240 Oh that's interesting. So it seems to be shifting to 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:40.840 the red when the winds are moving faster. 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.560 Yeah, that's my understanding of it here. But one of 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:47.240 the big things that they drive home is that correlating 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:50.840 the Great Red Spot's color changes with an actual physical 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:54.240 mechanism is really challenging, and so a lot of the 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:56.559 work in these papers seems to really get into that 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.560 and come up with various hypotheses as to how this 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:04.960 could be occurring. They point out that drift rate slash 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:09.240 motion doesn't present an obvious physical mechanism other than possibly 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:13.880 via cloud ingestion rate. They say that vortex stretching, this 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:17.160 is the lengthening of vortices in three dimensional fluid flow, 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:20.960 is a possible physical mechanism. And they also point out 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:23.760 that the most recent at the time twenty fourteen through 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:27.719 twenty seventeen changes in internal cloud morphology and color might 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:32.040 have been due to changes in divergence, internal vorticity, and 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:36.320 vortex stretching, rather than being correlated to its drift rate. Now, 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:39.120 some of that may just wash past you, and I 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:41.480 do want to acknowledge well, first of all, that this 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:43.800 is a very complex topic and I'm just going to 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:46.560 attempting to do my best to relate the basics of 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.600 it here. But also I have to acknowledge that everything 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:52.120 I just said didn't really answer the question of why 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:54.960 is it red or why is it orange or rust colored? Like? 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:58.400 What is the redness? Like? What are we looking at? 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.679 And discussion of this topic is complex, it seems far 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:05.679 from settled, but it all a lot of it anyway, 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:09.040 as far as I can understand, revolves around candidates for 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:14.400 the underlying chromophores, so the underlying particles that produce a 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:21.480 given color, sometimes collectively with other chromophors in general, talking 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:25.600 about in general about chromophors function and create colors that 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:28.160 we sense. But in the case of the Great Red Spot, 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:32.160 we're also considering all of this in light of the 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:37.280 aforementioned interactions going on in the storm, including especially how 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:41.640 high up into the atmosphere these particles are pushed. Now, 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:48.480 one there's a particular NASA JPL scientist who is the 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:51.360 lead author and sometimes I think maybe the supporting author 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:53.840 on a lot of papers about this, and it's a 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:56.600 man by the name of Robert A. West. The particular 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:59.520 one I was looking at here is Jovian Clouds and 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:03.960 Haze by West, Bains, and Friedson. And in this paper 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.880 they present a whole list of both organic and inorganic 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:11.800 chromophore candidates for the Great Red Spot that had been 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:14.520 proposed over the years by that point. So they're compiling 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:17.840 them from different different papers, different scientists and so forth. 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:20.000 I'm not going to include them all, but they include 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:25.360 the likes of hydrazine and white phosphorus on the inorganic side, 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:30.079 and on the organic side, the list includes the likes 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:36.360 of acetylene, photopolymers, proton irradiated H four plus NH three 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:41.440 that's methane plus ammonia, and even biota living organisms. And 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.000 the paper that they're citing for this idea was a 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.240 nineteen seventy six paper by Carl Sagan and Edwin Salpeter 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:51.560 who speculated on the possibility of not only life on Jupiter, 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:53.120 but a Jovian ecology. 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:58.120 Okay, so this is in speculation mode, not to say 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:00.640 that we have good reason to think that the red 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:03.800 colors would be caused by living organisms, but like, what 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:06.520 if they were caused that way. We know that say, 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:09.520 blooms of algae in the Earth, in the Earth's oceans 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:11.520 can change the color of the oceans. You can have 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:15.319 various reasons that micro organisms change the color of a 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:18.679 landscape feature. So what if that's what's happening in the 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:19.640 atmosphere of Jupiter. 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:22.600 Yeah, well, I'm glad you mentioned the oceans, because that's 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:25.400 one of the main things that Sagan and Saltpeter are 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:28.120 referencing and sort of using as a model. And it's 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:32.720 a very in depth paper. It's not a general audience 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:36.240 specific paper, but I want to read a quick quote 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.480 from it here. Quote we have in this discussion made 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:42.760 no distinction among various locales on Jupiter. But it is 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:46.120 clear that some locals, the Great Red Spot, for example, 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:49.840 may be more favored than others because of higher abundances 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:55.440 of organic molecules prevailing up drafts for other reasons. So yeah, 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:57.400 to be clear, I don't believe this is a widely 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:01.280 held candidate for a play in our solar system where 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:03.880 you could find extraterrestrial life. Like It's not like a 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:08.360 best case scenario, but in the paper is quite interesting 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:12.560 and in it they outline how they believe Jupiter's atmosphere 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:18.280 could feature quote ecological niches for sinkers, floaters, and hunters, 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:21.120 and they explore the possibility that such life forms could 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:24.600 exist at different stages of development in all three niches. 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:28.840 So a sinker in this scenario would be a primary 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:33.840 photosynthetic autotroph that reproduces as it passively sinks down through 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:37.680 the atmosphere among its kinds. So comparable to like plankton 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:39.000 in Earth's oceans. 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:44.160 Okay, so getting getting energy from the sun, making its 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:48.840 food that way and then sinking down passively through the atmosphere. 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:53.080 Right, and then the floaters would be autotrophic or heterotrophic 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:57.040 organisms that float via some manner of inflated bladder. So 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:59.400 these would be your space jellies, and they would eat 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:03.120 the sinkers or and or they would depend on on 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:06.760 solar energy as well. Okay, and then the hunter would 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:10.000 be the next step, a predator jellyfish type creature that 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:12.640 hunts on the floaters, or maybe it's a Manda ray. 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:15.800 You know, you can sort of go wild with the 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:16.880 imagination here. 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:19.680 Big crab with a bunch of balloons attached to it. 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:22.000 Yeah, yeah, that's the kind of thing you see depicted. 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:25.720 And they point out that if this were the case, 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:28.800 and again this is all speculation, they were just you know, 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:30.680 it's like, what if, and how would it work? If 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:34.080 they say that, there would be clear there would be 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:38.280 clear evolutionary lines to connect between these different forms. And 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:41.320 another thing that's interesting is, you know, this is exactly 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:44.520 the line of thinking that Arthur C. Clark employed in his 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:47.480 in that earlier novella that we cited, though of course, 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:51.360 his vision, being a sci fi tale published in Playboy, 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:54.920 obviously lacked the scientific rigor presented in the Sag and 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:56.080 Saltpeter paper here. 0:15:56.720 --> 0:16:00.440 Yeah, though, of course Clark was quite concerned in anyways 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:02.680 with plausibility. But he's also just trying to tell a 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:03.760 good story. 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:07.200 Right, and not really featuring a lot of equations. Yeah yeah, 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:11.240 so yeah, no shade at Arthur C. Clark at all here. 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:23.080 So as interesting as all this is the more accepted 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:28.320 theories for red chromophores in the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.440 they're not based on the idea that there's life in there. 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:34.320 We still don't have a firm answer. But I wanted 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:37.320 to discuss at least one of the more recent ideas 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:40.160 that seems to have gotten a lot of attention. So 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:43.800 there was one from twenty fourteen. This was an idea 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:49.040 presented by Kevin Baines, a NASA Cassini team scientist, and 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:52.240 he proposed that what we're broadly seeing is perhaps a 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:57.240 mixture of ammonia and acetylene gases blasted by solar energy 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:00.480 in the high upper reaches of the Great Red Spot. 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:03.320 So we mentioned in the last episode that the Great 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:06.200 Red Spot is pretty deep, it goes pretty deep down, 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:09.800 But I don't know if we really talked about how 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:11.840 high up it goes. I've read that the Great Red 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:16.000 Spot may extend something like eight kilometers or five miles 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:20.639 above the surrounding cloud tops in Jupiter's atmosphere. So the 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:24.280 idea here is that it's pushing its contents up higher 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:27.520 in the atmosphere than the surrounding areas and in doing 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:32.720 so subjecting them to greater solar interference, greater solar UV light, 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:37.280 and laboratory results have apparently indicated that this is possible. 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:41.320 So the idea here is that we have these chromophores, 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:47.440 these ammonium and settling gases that are not already red 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:50.359 in color, but they are shot up high enough that 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.679 they are exposed to more UV light, more solar radiation, 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:57.359 and that is what generates the color that we see 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:03.480 as the Great Red Spot. Okay, if this hypothesis is correct, 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:05.879 it would mean that the Great Red Spot is not 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:08.679 like red all the way down. It would just be 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.840 red more or less at the surface, something that you 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:15.080 see compared in some of the science journalism, especially to 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:15.840 a sunburn. 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:19.240 Yeah, okay, so I saw this. I saw articles describing 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:23.840 the sunburn hypothesis of the redness, though a different mechanism 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:25.680 obviously than like inflamed skin. 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:29.520 But yeah, but skin deep, I guess is the metaphor 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:33.119 you could use here. Now. To be clear, there are 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:37.920 other competing hypotheses in which in which it wouldn't be 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:40.640 just gray or white underneath, it would be like red 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:45.040 all the way down. These competing hypotheses still envision some 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:49.000 model in which there are red chromophores that are pushed 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:51.040 up through the storm from greater depths, but they're red 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:53.280 in color within the storm as well as at the 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:58.399 upper surface. So again, yeah, it's a complex topic, getting 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:01.480 like it's so red eyes, it's so red. Well, we 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:04.119 don't know for sure, but we have some very interesting 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:08.880 hypotheses as to why, some definitely more believable and likely 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:11.720 than others. But that makes that I do love the 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:13.639 idea that, hey, what if it's read because it's just 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:15.439 full of life? That would be crazy. 0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:18.359 Yeah, what if we're looking at algol blooms and certain 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:19.680 bands all on the surface. 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:23.080 Yeah, in a way, it's really it's the more exciting. Well, 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:24.919 I mean, I think all these ideas are exciting, but 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:27.320 you can you can imagine where that idea would maybe 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:31.440 be that nice mix of exciting and accessible to the 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:35.120 average person. But yeah, I don't think that's what's going 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:35.560 on there. 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:38.399 So I wanted to come back to a question we 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:43.080 raised in the last episode. We established last time that 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:45.560 the great red Spot of today, at least according to 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:51.679 most informed observers, is probably not the same red spot 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:55.800 seen by astronomers like Giovanni Cassini in the seventeenth century. 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:58.360 You know, we talked about him. He saw a spot 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:02.200 in the sixteen sixties. But it's probably not the same 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:04.560 one for a number of reasons, one of which is 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:08.360 that astronomers stopped seeing the spot for like many decades. 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:11.760 It seems like suddenly, like in the seventeen hundreds, people 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:14.240 are not seeing this thing anymore. And it seems like 0:20:14.480 --> 0:20:17.960 astronomers don't know a giant red spot again until about 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:21.919 eighteen thirty one. So that seems quite implausible if it 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:24.320 was the same spot and it was there the whole time. 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:28.640 Yeah, otherwise people would clearly keep describing it. It's pretty exciting, 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:28.879 you know. 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:33.639 So it's very unlikely that it's the same spot astronomers 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:38.000 saw in the seventeenth century. But that suggests that storms 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:40.960 like this come and go. And if they come and go, 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:43.919 where do they come from how did the current spot 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:48.200 arise in the first place. Now, in twenty twenty four, 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:50.879 there was a bunch of reporting about the origin of 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:53.600 the Great Red Spot based on the publication of a 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:56.439 scientific paper that we did mention in part one of 0:20:56.480 --> 0:20:59.280 this series, but I'm going to give the full citation here. 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.119 The paper is called the Origin of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:06.000 and it was by a group of authors, the first 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:08.360 author of which we actually just mentioned another paper by 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:12.040 them a moment ago, but anyway, it's by Augustine Sanchez 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:17.639 la Vega, Enrique Garcia Melando, John Legereta, Arnew, Miro Menel 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:22.440 Soria and Kevin Arenz Velasquez. This was published in Geophysical 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:25.960 Research Letters in twenty twenty four, and the authors of 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:28.960 this paper were based, I believe, all in Spain at 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:32.440 several different institutions like the University of the Basque Country 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:36.960 and Polytechnic University of Catalonia. And in addition to this paper, 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:40.639 I relied on some explanation and analysis from several articles, 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:44.480 especially one in Scientific American by the astronomer and science 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:49.000 communicator Phil Plait that was from July twenty twenty four. Now, 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:51.919 before I get into the details about this discovery. I 0:21:51.920 --> 0:21:55.399 did want to mention a bit of background about the 0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:58.280 structure of Jupiter in its atmosphere because that kind of 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:01.600 informs this research. So a few things about the structure 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:04.560 of Jupiter we didn't quite get into yet. Jupiter is 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:08.280 made mostly of the same thing the Sun is made of, 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:12.160 actually of hydrogen and helium, and so if you're going 0:22:12.200 --> 0:22:15.639 from the outside in, Jupiter has a vast layer of 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:20.679 atmospheric gas, again dominated by hydrogen and helium, along with 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:24.240