Jupiter water clouds detected inside the planet’s Great Red Spot may harbor the possibility of life, researchers reported this week.
For nearly a quarter of a century, experts have debated about how much water might be swirling within Jupiter’s atmosphere, according to a media release.
It all began in 1995, when NASA launched its historical Galileo probe, but the findings left scientist baffled.
They expected to find considerable amounts of water within the planet’s atmosphere, as 79 of Jupiter's moons are mostly made of ice, but instead Galileo entered a region that proved to be much drier than anticipated.
Did this mean the probe just did not find the quantities of water during the 58 minutes that it relayed data back to Earth before it disintegrated into the planet’s interion? Or were scientists off on their predictions?
A national team of scientists decided to turn their attentions to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a centuries-old storm larger than planet Earth, to look for the answers and their findings could now put tighter limits on the total amount of water in the planet.
The researchers conducted their search by using radiation data collected by two instruments on ground-based telescopes in Hawaii and found evidence of three cloud layers in the Great Red Spot.
The deepest of the three cloud layers is believed to be composed of frozen water.
"The discovery of water on Jupiter using our technique is important in many ways. Our current study focused on the red spot, but future projects will be able to estimate how much water exists on the entire planet," said Clemson University astrophysicist Máté Ádámkovics, who was part of the research.
He explained that water may play a critical role in Jupiter's weather patterns, which would help scientists understand what makes the planet’s atmosphere so turbulent.
It also means that there is a potential for liquid water on Jupiter, making it possible that there is life on the planet.
"So, though it appears very unlikely, life on Jupiter is not beyond the range of our imaginations," Ádámkovics said.
The findings also bring scientists closer to reconstructing the history of Jupiter and could suggest that Jupiter may have migrated to its present location.
"Based upon all the exoplanets now known, it appears as if planets may form at a different place and then migrate in and/or out to where we see them today," said Imke de Pater, a UC Berkeley professor of astronomy, who was part of the study. "So what happened in our solar system? Did Jupiter form beyond where Neptune is today?"
A report detailing the findings, was published this month in the Astronomical Journal.