The Universe (2007–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Jupiter: The Giant Planet - full transcript

Four hundred million miles from
Earth, exists a mini solar system

of over 60 moons rotating
around a powerful planet of gas.

Its flowing colors and
spots hold strange beauty,

but contain violent
storms and jet streams.

Could this big, bright ball of weather
have been the Star of Bethlehem?

Could one of its moons harbor
life beneath its icy crust?

We expect that branches of
life would exist on Europa,

just simply because
water is the key feature.

I wanna go ice-fishing on Europa.

Cut a hole, put a submersible,
look around, see if anything...

if anything swims up to the
camera lens and licks the camera.



That's what I wanna do.

And does our own planet owe its
survival to this massive cosmic magnet?

Jupiter, the giant planet.

Jupiter is half a billion
miles from the Sun.

A giant sphere of intrigue.

This churning ball of gas may
look like an artist's rendering,

but it's the real thing.

Jupiter has the most
exotic weather patterns

we've ever seen in the solar system.

Jupiter is 84% hydrogen

and almost 14% helium,

the two lightest and most
abundant elements in the Universe,

rolled into a mammoth mass.

This thing is eleven times
the diameter of Earth,



and you could take a thousand Earths and
stuff them inside Jupiter comfortably.

Jupiter really is the
lord of the solar system.

You know, about 70% of the mass
in all the planets is in Jupiter.

If you talking about planets, Jupiter
is the big boy in the block and

it really does rule the roost.

Jupiter is the largest
planet in the solar system.

Visible to the naked eye.

A day is only 9.9 hours long.

And it takes 11.86
years to orbit the Sun.

A 150 pound person would
weight 350 pounds on Jupiter.

There are thunder clouds made
of ammonia, sulfur and water.

Exploring Jupiter would be NASA's
most daring mission to date.

It's a hostile place,
with temperature extremes,

from frigid to fiery.

Its electromagnetic
radiation is intense.

It could kill a traveler
to the planet in an instant.

We would need heavy lead protection

and that's very difficult
to lift off the ground.

So we have some difficult
engineering challenges

to actually bring human
beings to the planet Jupiter.

A landing on Jupiter
is... not going to happen.

Jupiter itself is a very gassy planet.

It's made of gas. So you...

would not have a solid surface
on which to land and walk around.

You would just keep descending through
the clouds and then be eventually crushed

by the pressure of Jupiter's atmosphere.

That'd make a human trip to
Jupiter quite a challenge.

But what if we could go there.

Doctor Andrew Ingersoll is
an authority on the planet.

He takes us for a ride.

You need a special kind of balloon,

because Jupiter's
atmosphere is hydrogen.

Hydrogen is the lightest gas.

A human balloon would sink.

So the only thing that'll flow
in a cold hydrogen atmosphere

is hot hydrogen.

And so you need a
hot-air hydrogen balloon.

For the past ten years,
NASA has been developing

ultra-long duration balloons,
for robotic exploration.

And as we all know, heating
hydrogen is a tricky thing.

But just how this behemoth
was born, is a puzzle.

The formation of Jupiter is the greatest
mystery associated with the planet.

Some believe Jupiter may
have been a failed star.

Like the Sun, it had
the right ingredients,

hydrogen and helium.

But not enough mass to create the
internal pressure and temperature

necessary to have nuclear fusion.

So, it became a planet instead.

The thought is that there
was this cloud in the galaxy

that had the same
composition of the Sun.

And it collapsed under its
own gravity and some stuff

was left behind.

And that stuff became the planets.

And the majority of that
stuff became Jupiter.

And the rest, of course,
went into the Sun.

And there were a couple of little
tiny leftovers, like Earth.

Jupiter's spinning gasses
attracted light elements,

and over time grew bigger
and bigger in the process.

Almost like an oyster, creating layers
around a grain of sand to make a pearl.

What gasses and solids
Jupiter didn't ingest,

it spat out into space.

So Jupiter is like the big
brother in the schoolyard,

protecting you from bullies that
might wreak havoc on your existence.

I tend to think of it as more
of the cosmic Frisbee guy.

It's grabbing things out of space

and it's also tossing them back out.

It ends up keeping those objects
from the inner solar system,

where Earth and Mars and Venus are.

By cleaning some of the debris up,

kicking some of it out,
shooting some of it into the Sun,

where it would be lost forever,

Jupiter cleaned out a path
that the other planets could

exist in some sort of peace.

So dominant is this Frisbee phenomenon,

Earth may owe its very
existence to Jupiter.

It influences the courses of comets
and even some meteors and asteroids,

so that over the eons
the fact that Jupiter is there,

helps dictate what happens
in the inner solar system.

So really the presence of Jupiter may
be one reason why we have life on Earth

and habitability and be able to
have the Earth nice environment

instead of getting
pummeled by so many comets.

There is no greater proof
of Jupiter's power play

than what happened during a
seven day period in July of 1994.

A comet called Shoemaker-Levy 9

barreled toward Jupiter.

Once under Jupiter's influence
there was no going back.

A missile was on a crash
course with a ball of gas.

Jupiter's gravitational
pull was so great

that it broke the
comet into small pieces

that came in one at a time.

These pieces assaulted the planet
at a speed of 37 miles per second.

When you have a missile
going at supersonic speeds

you get a shock.

You can see sort of clouds
of material being jetted up

from beneath where it landed.

One of the fire balls generated by
the collision with Jupiter's atmosphere

flared 1,800 miles into space.

Had Earth been in the projectile sights

the effects of such a smash up would
have been catastrophic to say the least.

Similar to the event that
wiped out the dinosaurs.

The energies that were released
in those fragments hitting

was larger than anywhere
of ten or twenty times

more powerful than the
entire world arsenal of bombs.

Take Jupiter out of the picture,

bring this giant comet
into the inner solar system,

where would it have gone?

We have no idea.

Might have crashed into Earth.

If that comet had crashed into Earth,

things would be a lot
different around here.

The experts believe that
comet strikes on Jupiter

may be 8,000 times more
frequent that those on Earth

thanks to the Frisbee effect.

But it goes both ways because
Jupiter has no value system,

when it sees an errant comet it
may attract it and swallow it up.

But where it flings it
is anyone's guess

and so errant comets can
be flung in towards Earth,

they can be flung into the Sun,

they can be flung out
of the solar system.

There's a reason the planet rejects
some of the space junk heading its way.

Jupiter being the biggest object in
the solar system has the most gravity.

And so other objects, little fleas,

they have their own
trajectory flying by, are bent

from where it would be towards Jupiter
and usually with an acceleration.

And that acceleration can cause it
sometimes to just be ejected completely.

No earthly Frisbee thrower can
match Jupiter's flinging force.

It is much faster than
any bullet ever known.

It rejects things at a
rate of 30 miles per second.

Jupiter's wonders are hard to fathom.

They've captivated men for centuries.

Prehistoric humans realized that
it was moving among the stars

and it was one of the
planets that they appreciated.

Jupiter was the king of the Gods,

after all, in Roman mythology.

And there may be a biblical
reference to Jupiter.

Ever since I was like five
years old I remember people:

"Oh, that was the star of Bethlehem!"

And whether or not it really was,
obviously we have no way of knowing,

but it's not clear whether
the star that was talked about

is a single star or whether they
met an astronomical alignment

of objects in the sky,
we don't really know.

It's known as conjunction
in scientific terms.

According to researches
Jupiter and Venus

did appear as one large
star-like object in August 3 B.C.,

and would have been visible
in eastern night sky.

But it was Galileo, the
father of modern astronomy,

who made the first recorded
sighting of the Jupiter system.

In the early days of 1610, only about 18
months after the telescope was invented,

he got his own telescope
and he looked at Jupiter.

In 1665 Jupiter's most
fascinating feature was discovered.

Its giant "red eye" was actually
the eye of an enormous storm.

Unlike any experienced on Earth.

This one has raged for at
least 300 hundred years.

This weather disturbance
is a meteorologist's dream.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot, is truly huge.

You could take Earth and flay it out and

it wouldn't even
really cover the Spot.

This storm is the hugest
storm in the solar system.

And just to give a feeling
about it, it's about 12,000 miles.

And the Earth is only 8,000 miles wide.

And the winds blow quite
fast around the edge.

But it's calm in the center.

It's... It's not like a hurricane

which has an eye and very fast
turbulent winds in the center,

the Red Spot is rather calm.

If you're in a balloon, it
might be a pleasant ride.

As long as you avoided
the small scale stuff

like the thunderstorms
and the turbulent places.

Even though you'd be going very
fast it might be quite calm.

Fast as in 350 miles an hour.

The fastest wind ever recorded
here on Earth was 175 miles an hour.

But is it an Earth-like storm?

It's a giant collection of
clouds roiling around,

lightning going on...

So we can only model and imagine
what kind of precipitation

but condensation in the form of
condensed vapor of various gasses.

This famous Red Spot is
a high pressure system

that can take 10 days
to complete a rotation.

It's really a backwards hurricane,
it's called an anticyclone,

that's the name for
those that goes backwards

from the direction of
a typical hurricane.

That's not the only curious thing.

Hurricanes, as we know them,
need water in order to form.

There's no water engine in the Red Spot.

This never-ending weather system
is feeding on something else.

But what?

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is
something like a non-stop hurricane.

It's a colossal storm, complete
with violent wind and lightning.

Storm chasers would love
to go running after it.

Dr. Tim Dowling of the
University of Louisville

is in the hunt for similar
phenomena here on Earth.

The Red Spot is...
think of it as a huge, extra...

lens or egg shape of mass,
it's just an enormous thing that sort of

quiets down the fluid and presses
it down into the hotter interior

so you don't get thunderstorms.

But if you go on the edge of the
Red Spot, especially north-west,

you get some of the most
horrific thunderstorms

you're gonna find on Jupiter.

The Spot doesn't have an eye
and it isn't fueled by water.

There's no ocean over which it forms.

What then keeps it going and going?

I've always likened it in my
own view as... like a mini volcano

inside of Jupiter.

Actually an atmospheric volcano.

Dr. Baines believes that warmer gasses
rise from heat, deep within the planet.

While trying to escape
they create a vortex.

So, for some reason I believe
there's extra energy right there.

But it's just a theory.

Science is left without answers
to that question and others.

Current theories cannot quite
explain why the Spot is so well-formed

and why it stays in one place.

The plot thickened over the years
as scientists learnt even more.

It became a deeper mystery because

instead of everything just sort of
smoothly going around the Red Spot,

we saw there's turbulence and

there were smaller scale structures
that would come and go every day,

and it was chaotic and turbulent

and yet the Red Spot just
existed and stayed hold on*.

Jupiter's storms aren't
limited to the Great Red Spot.

Cloud decks three layers thick
hover and cover the planet.

If you were inside the atmosphere
of Jupiter you would hear

very loud thunder.
In fact the thunder actually travels

four times faster on Jupiter
than it does on Earth.

It's about 3,000 miles an hour.

So rain falls twice as fast on Jupiter.

The charge separation that pulls the
positive charges to the top of the clouds

and the negative charges to the bottom
of the clouds is twice as efficient

on Jupiter for that reason alone, because
the rain is falling so much faster.

Towers of cumulous convection that you
see on Jupiter are three times taller.

They go up 30 miles whereas on
Earth they go up 6 or 7 miles.

It would be impossible to
survive within the Great Red Spot,

with its 350
mile-an-hour winds.

By comparison, hurricane Wilma,

which had the highest recorded
winds of any earthly storm,

slammed into the Yucatan peninsula
in 2005 with barely a breath,

175 mile-an-hour
blasts.

Our weather is simple,
Jupiter's is complex.

Now on Jupiter you just basically have

one storm system sort of stacked
on another stacked on another

with lots and lots of room*.

Basically these are the
storms in their natural state.

These storms move relentlessly within
Jupiter's other distinct feature,

streams of fierce jets that
continually circle the planet.

Scientists are only
beginning to understand

what they are and where they come from.

There is a massive
eastward flow of material

and that means...

the material's flowing more than one
and a half football fields per second.

That's really moving, you
don't want to be in that.

29 other belts and zones of varying
width extend outwards from there.

They are what give Jupiter
its characteristic appearance.

They move in alternating directions,
some eastward, some westward.

They're much smaller scale the high
latitude jets than the equatorial one,

as far as in comparison
to Earth these are massive,

super-fast high-speed winds and yet
they're just going back and forth.

The planet's rotation rate
has something to do with it.

Jupiter generates a lot of
energy because it really moves.

So the very nature
of the spinning causes

Jupiter to not just have one
jet stream but many jet streams

going in opposite
directions along the planet.

And so you can see these
zones, so what you have

is an exaggerated version of
Earth's basic weather pattern.

The spectacular swirls are created in
surface clouds where the zones meet.

It's believed that the energy
ultimately powering this belt phenomenon

comes from intense heat deep within.

It's not unlike something
we see every day.

Buy a boiler pot of water
on a stove, it'll start bubbling

and bubbles come out from the
bottom and try to get out trying to

circulate that water that
currents around, so...

same thing inside Jupiter, we
have gases and liquids down there

that are trying to get the heat out.

There are basic questions, basic
pieces of physics to go after

to explain the massive jets.

Shouldn't we be able to explain that?

Earth has just one primary
jet stream, it moves eastward,

and another major flow that
blows westward, the trade winds.

Triple that power and you've
got the jet streams of Jupiter.

Totally different from Earth. And yet...

I should be careful, not totally different
from Earth, just Earth on steroids.

And you ask yourself, wow!

If I understood what's
going on on Jupiter,

Earth would be
just a piece of cake.

Jupiter's mysteries aren't
limited to the planet itself.

Some of its most intriguing
elements are circling around it.

Jupiter's got several dozen moons
that are big enough to be seen

and has probably got a lot more

that are too small to be
seen with current technology

and no doubt in coming years
more will be discovered.

Some of the moons almost
have the size of some planets.

So really Jupiter has its
own little solar system.

Thanks to its incredible
gravitational pull,

it's sucked in asteroids along
with other space debris.

For the most part there is order.

But there are some erratic
moons in orbit around Jupiter.

It's managed chaos.

Can you imagine a bunch of runners

in the track, in their lanes, each
runner stays and they won't collide.

It's kind of a celestial mechanics.

Each moon holds its own fascination.

Four of Jupiter's prominent
moons were discovered by Galileo.

He first observed that they
revolved around the planet.

They are named for
Jupiter, the god's lovers.

The first major moon
you come into is Io,

which is this very active place,
with lots of volcanoes.

It's almost all the time going off.

Shooting out magma 200 miles into space,

Io is a wonder pockmark with
over a hundred volcanoes,

some the size of California which
seem to turn themselves on and off.

Ganymede is the largest
moon in our solar system.

Five times the size of Earth's Moon.
Callisto is the most heavily cratered.

It has clearly taken a
beating in its lifetime.

Then there is Europa, the
ice queen to Jupiter's king.

No one knows its make-up for sure.

It looks like a cracked egg.

It really looks like the
whole thing had liquid water on it

and some time
it froze and it cracked.

And we believe that these patterns
are due to tidal forces that crack it.

As alien as Europa seems it is smooth
and glassy in some spots, hilly in others.

In fact it is remarkably similar to
one of Earth's frozen wonderlands.

There is a lake in Antarctica called
lake Vostok that scientists think is

an analogy to what we see on Europa.

Antarctica has a huge thick ice crust
and underneath there is this liquid lake.

And we think this may be very similar
to the water ice underneath the surface

that we see on Europa.

If you go down through the crust, you
cut through the ice, and then you'll get

liquid water. And we are very convinced
that there's liquid water down there.

It's the only place that
we know, beside the Earth

which has liquid water and large
bodies that have been there, we believe

for more than a million
or two million years.

And where there's water,
could there be life?

Jupiter's moon Europa
is bursting with secrets.

It may even have warm thermal
vents deep below its frozen crust.

In fact there's an immense ocean,
bigger than the Pacific Ocean,

worth of liquid water down there.

That is sitting there
for things to happen to it.

The presence of water means one thing.

We may not be alone.

I wanna go ice-fishing on Europa.

Cut a hole, put a submersible,
look around, see if anything...

anything swims up to the
camera lens and licks the camera.

That's what I wanna do.

One scientist is planning
just such a fishing trip.

At this outdoor lab, near Austin, Texas,
hopes are hanging on a little robot.

This is designed for exploration

in unknown territory,
completely unknown territory,

and search for biological life.

It's a DEep Phreatic THermal
eXplorer, or "DepthX" for short.

Its proving ground right
now is a local quarry.

And there are big plans for its future.

If everything went according the
plan we would launch around 2017.

It would be at Europa by 2018...

and by 2019 for certain we'd know
whether there's life off Earth.

That's the game.

DepthX is the brainchild
of engineer Bill Stone.

He and a team of scientists have
staked their reputations on it.

They spent 6 years developing the
concept and building the prototype.

It's part of an ambitious project
that would see it carried into space,

sent through 6 miles of
ice and into Europa's ocean.

To divide it down into all
the various vehicles, you have a

a parent vehicle which takes you
to orbit around the moon Europa.

There would be a lander...

that would land on the ice,

then there's a second stage of
the lander which melts its way

from 3 to 5 kilometers of ice cap and then
at that point you kick out the 3rd stage.

We need a fast moving device, that
would be sort of torpedo-shaped,

most likely nuclear propelled.

And that would drive for
thousands of kilometers around

the central ocean of Europa.

Is that really feasible? NASA thinks so.

The space agency is onboard
with the money and its blessing,

an investment in the search for life.

If life exists on Jupiter's moon
Europa, could it walk, talk or fly?

It would be little viruses
or no, maybe a best bacteria?

We would expect only to
see primitive life forms.

But they might be some other things
that we see on Earth, we just don't know.

Scientists are encouraged by the
discovery of strange and hardy lifeforms

found in the most
inhospitable places on Earth.

Tube worms, for example,

survive and thrive in total darkness.

Extreme pressure isn't a problem.

The creatures were discovered in 1977

several miles below the
surface of the Galapagos rift.

They exist in water, near
superheated thermal vents.

It's believed that
these very conditions,

darkness, high pressure
and hydrothermal vents,

are present on Europa.

You could have hydrothermal vents

kicking up warmth and nutrients

down, near the core of Europa,

and that organisms would have
fed off of that material

just like they might have
in the early Earth.

And while tube worms might not be
lurking beneath Europa's icy shell,

something else could be.

This microbial life is
the bulk of life on Earth.

We expect that branches of that
type of life will exist on Europa,

just simply because
water is the key feature.

Finding it consumes
scientist Bill Stone.

Its DepthX may answer a question
that excites seekers of knowledge.

Can we have the robot
behavior look for

signs of life

and then try to collect the samples
based of what it's sensing?

Stone's baby is in its infancy.

At the same time it is
futuristic and advanced.

It's a high tech toy like no other,

that might show our world
what another is all about.

Our first contact with
extraterrestrial life

may be on Jupiter's moon, Europa.

The DepthX robot, or more
accurately "Hydrobot",

is being designed to ultimately
think, move and explore

without help from man.

And that is all to be
done by the robot itself.

We're not gonna be
guiding it to do that.

That's gonna be a big step forward in
what we would call robot science autonomy.

It's a real life hell.

The star of a new "Space Odyssey".

We'll literally

hit a button and just

let it dive below the surface
and we won't see it again

until it tells us what's down there.

DepthX would be able to
extract and analyze samples

on its own as it navigates the ocean.

This little tube we see down here
will be pulling water samples

and store them in one *** bag,
we have five of them on-board.

But before it does that

it actually powers through a series
of micro pumps over here on the left,

and brings it into and
on-board microscope.

And that microscope will take images

of what's in the water
down to about five microns.

So we can see most of the typical
types of microbial life,

from five to two hundred
microns, on screen.

The robot will use that to discriminate
to determine if there is life

and then grab a sample.

DepthX and its systems must be
made smaller to work in space

and it still must pass
trials under ice flows.

We are testing this in Antarctica

to make sure all works
totally under ice.

The question of life on Europa is
probably the big, you know, unknown,

because that would change our whole
view of the Universe, basically.

I mean, if this little
moon sitting out there

in his hostile environment of Jupiter

can have life form on it,

that means that probably tell us that,

that life is almost everywhere.

The science is there, I mean, I think
searching for like is one of the most

compelling things that we can do as...

as not only scientists but
as a race... as human beings.

It's a giant leap,
and not just for mankind.

Nor for robot kind.

Of all Jupiter's imposing features,

none is more impressive
than the one you cannot see.

It's bigger by far
than the Great Red Spot,

more dynamic than the
bands of jet streams,

and as lethal as any
killer known to man.

You have one of the most
powerful radiation environments

in the solar system,
aside from the Sun.

The magnetic field of Jupiter is the largest
entity, I believe, in the solar system.

It is a bubble, 450 million miles long

buzzing with electrically
charged particles.

It's Jupiter's magnetosphere.

The Sun's sitting here
putting out the solar wind,

and the solar wind is charged
particle of protons and electrons.

These particles flow along
at 1 million miles an hour.

And Jupiter basically captures
these protons and electrons,

all these charged particles
like electrical currents,

and is has it then in the space
circling around Jupiter.

No word in the English language

accurately conveys the
enormity of this phenomenon.

The magnetosphere of Jupiter is the
biggest object is the solar system.

Is a lot bigger than the Sun.

Comparisons are the best measure

of this
mega-mighty-wonder.

If it were visible in the night sky,

it would be many, many
times bigger than the moon.

It's enormous. Even though

it's five times as far away
from Earth as the Sun is,

it still would look
immense in the night sky.

If visible it would take a
familiar form: a windsock.

There's a rounded section facing
away from the planet, in one direction,

with a tail flowing out the other.

This windsock reaches
the outer orbit of Saturn.

Power plant Jupiter generates up to
ten million amps of electrical current.

The biggest planet in the solar system

can conduct electricity all
the way through and around it.

This conductivity creates
a phenomenon we can see,

when the excited
charged particles escape.

Jupiter has auroras,

because when those particles leak in and
crash into the upper atmosphere, it glows.

Just as Earth has auroras.

These ghostly auroras are a
thousand times more powerful

than Earth's northern
and southern lights.

They measure up to 1,200 miles across.

If you could stand under them,
they'd fill the entire sky,

moving at lightning speed,
ten thousand miles an hour.

Jupiter's magnetic field
is a monster and it roars.

In fact it's speaking to us, right now.

Jupiter...

The giant of the solar system has
something to say, if you're listening.

We can hear what we call "lion roars",

'cause it has this roaring sound.

We can hear whistler
modes, we can hear hiss...

And whistles that are going:

And these are all
indications of dynamics,

things that are happening
in the magnetosphere now.

If you find yourself driving
on a dark desert highway,

your AM radio might just tune in

to the strange sounds of
Jupiter's magnetosphere.

The bursts are as short as a few seconds,
and as long as a couple of minutes.

They come and go every hour too.

Most of it sounds like static, but every
once in a while you pick up something

that sounds like a rising
tone or a falling tone.

Sound listeners have described audio
spasms that sound like woodpeckers

or waves crashing on the
beach. The noise is disturbing.

But just why the planet was talking,
remained a mystery until Voyager II

passed through the outer
magnetosphere, in 1979.

Nobody really understood for a long
time how those signals were generated.

So that was one of those things that

was on my mind when I got interested in
Jupiter. What in the world was going on

with these radio emissions?

It is one of the few secrets
finally surrendered by Jupiter.

And that answered some
questions but it raised new ones.

And... I think that's the way it
should be. If you don't have questions,

it gets kind of boring and dull. So...

I think that the fact that the planets
don't give up their secrets easily,

or the Universe doesn't,
that's part of the game,

it's what it makes it interesting.

Jupiter keeps astounding
and confounding scientists.

One surprise came in 1979, when it
was discovered that Jupiter has a ring.

It's nothing on the order of Saturn's,
still, it's another feature that fascinates.

All of the giant planets have rings,

probably leftover from
when the planets formed,

and the moons coagulated out of
the gas that was there and then

it could be a failed moon.

So, Jupiter's ring comes from
material being knocked off

of one of the interior moons.

So it's dust that's collected
from material that's

coming in from outside moons.

The ring is slowly growing
as new material flows into it.

And there's a whole other side of
the planet that remains a mystery.

Why do the storm spots keep forming.

There's the Dark Spot, for example.

Glimpses of it were first spied in 1997.

It appeared to be a huge ominous
cloud twice the size of Earth,

hovering above Jupiter's North Pole.

There's a host of other spots too.

There are other sort of smaller
cousins that have come and gone,

there were three ovals about half
a third of the size of the Red Spot.

And they sort of occupied the same
latitude band in the southern hemisphere.

And they'd been
around since the 1930's.

And... amateur astronomers saw them form
and they were around till the late 90's

and they... two of them merged with each
other, and then the remaining two merged,

and now there's one.

And it keeps transforming.

It turned to red
about six months ago,

so now we're calling it
the Little Red Spot,

because it turned colored, now why did
they turn colored is a big question.

So there's chemistry going on,
or some type of extra dynamics

that's going on that just kicked in
and we need to start studying that.

Jupiter is a hostile
and restless planet.

Its giant gaseous body
and violent storms,

make it one of the most alien
environments in the solar system.

Even though it is half
a billion miles from us,

we may have more in common with
our cousin planet than we think.

I think the lesson to learn
from Jupiter here is...

Whatever's going on in our climate
and our weather patterns here on Earth,

Jupiter has more of it,
but Earth is not an island,

and they're better examples of what 's
going on on Earth than even Earth itself.

For scientists, Jupiter is the king of
many questions concerning our solar system,

and could possibly hold the answers.