As the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter still harbors many mysteries that science has yet to explain.
By observing Jupiter from the Hubble Space Telescope over many years, researchers have discovered the emergence of dark oval-shaped objects at the planet’s northern and southern poles.
The mysterious object appears as a massive vortex when observed in ultraviolet light by the Hubble Space Telescope (Image: UC Berkeley).
These objects create enormous swirling currents that absorb ultraviolet rays, each stream being the size of Earth, manifesting as dark oval shapes visible as dense fog in Jupiter’s stratosphere.
However, no one knows where these strange objects come from.
Until now, planetary scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have officially decoded them.
They believe that these are magnetic vortices, generated by the friction between magnetic fields in the planet’s strong magnetic field.
Similar to Earth, Jupiter’s magnetic field converges at the poles, pushing charged particles to collide with molecules in the atmosphere, creating auroras.
Unlike Earth, the auroras on Jupiter can only be detected by UV light, so they do not resemble the colorful displays typically seen in Earth’s sky.
However, the transient phenomenon of dark oval shapes appearing at Jupiter’s poles indicates a connection to the planet’s magnetic field, much like auroras.
Tom Stallard, a planetary scientist at Northumbria University in the UK, believes that at Jupiter’s ionosphere, magnetic vortices frequently form, spiraling deep into the planet’s stratosphere.
These magnetic vortices then stir up aerosol particles in the lower atmosphere, creating a dense fog-like swirling mass that absorbs ultraviolet rays to form dark oval shapes.
This also suggests that the mysterious objects may be formed due to swirling dynamics, rather than chemical reactions caused by energetic particles in the atmosphere.
Although humanity has observed and studied Jupiter for over 2,000 years, the planet remains in a “mysterious zone” for us.
The closest recorded distance between Earth and Jupiter is 587 million km, while the farthest distance is 980 million km.
So far, only two spacecraft have traveled to Jupiter and stopped there: the Galileo and Juno spacecraft. Galileo took over 6 years to reach Jupiter’s orbit, while Juno achieved the same in nearly 5 years.
