Podcaster: Richard Drumm
Title: Space Scoop: Our Solar System’s Superhero
Organization: 365 Days Of Astronomy
Link : astrosphere.org ; http://unawe.org/kids/unawe1532/
Description: Space scoop, news for children.
Bio: Richard Drumm is President of the Charlottesville Astronomical Society and President of 3D – Drumm Digital Design, a video production company with clients such as Kodak, Xerox and GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals. He was an observer with the UVa Parallax Program at McCormick Observatory in 1981 & 1982. He has found that his greatest passion in life is public outreach astronomy and he pursues it at every opportunity.
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Transcript:
This is 365 Days of Astronomy. Today we bring you a new episode in our Space Scoop series. This show is produced in collaboration with Universe Awareness, a program that strives to inspire every child with our wonderful cosmos.
Today’s story is…
Our Solar System’s Superhero
Jupiter is our Solar System’s very own superhero. The giant planet is two and a half times more massive than all the rest of the planets in our Solar System combined.
And with great mass, comes great gravity. With the super power of super-strong gravity, Jupiter plays a heroic role in our Solar System, protecting life on Earth.
Remember the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago? Haven’t had one that big since then, have we? No. Without Jupiter, many others could have struck the Earth throughout human history.
These destructive collisions might even have prevented human life from ever starting! It would have been “Lights out!” for us before we even climbed down out of the trees!
But luckily for us, Jupiter’s gravity diverts most comets and asteroids that could head towards us here on Earth well before they reach us.
In 1994 Jupiter swallowed comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and in 2009 it ate another large object, possibly an asteroid. Twice in 2010 and once 2012 fireballs were observed hitting the planet.
For this reason along with many others, astronomers think that solar systems similar in layout to our own are the most likely places to find advanced alien life.
Unfortunately, though, we have found lots of solar systems with massive planets that lie close to their star, and we’ve not found many that lie far away, like Jupiter.
That’s because spotting planets that lie farther out from their parent stars is much trickier. The close in, so-called “Hot Jupiters” lie close enough to their stars to gravitationally pull them around enough for us to detect the star’s tiny wobbling.
Detecting Jupiter-sized planets at a similar distance from their star as our Jupiter’s distance from our Sun is a different story.
However, astronomers have just found Jupiter’s doppleganger — Jupiter’s twin — a Jupiter-mass planet in a Jupiter-like orbit around a Sun-like star. The star is called HIP 11915 for the Hipparcos catalog it’s listed in, and it’s in the winter-time constellation Cetus the whale.
The Brazilian-led team used the HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6 meter telescope at the ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile to make the discovery.
This finding gives us new hope that a solar system just like ours might exist, and advanced alien life might exist there, partly due to its very own life-saving superhero!
Hey Here’s a Cool Fact
Jupiter might be our superhero, but it’s no gentle giant. The planet is covered by ferocious hurricanes with wind speeds of 360 km/h that can blow for hundreds of years!
The Great Red Spot has been seen to be shrinking lately, but it is unknown if this is a permanent situation or a cyclical effect as the spot has disappeared from time to time in the past.
The word “Jupiter” comes from the Proto-Indo-European language’s name *Dyēu-pəter which suggests a translation to “God Father Hmmm… I wonder if the planet will make us an offer we can’t refuse?
Thank you for listening to 365 Days of Astronomy!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by NUCLIO. Audio post-production by Richard Drumm. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes. Please consider supporting the podcast with a few dollars (or Euros!). Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. This year we celebrate cosmic light as light is our info messenger in the universe. Join us and share your story to celebrate the International Year of Light. Until tomorrow! Goodbye!