Questions tagged [gas-giants]

Questions regarding massive planets composed of layers of gases, such as hydrogen and helium, surrounding a solid/liquid core.

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JWST Early Black Holes: Gas Collapsed To Metallic Hydrogen Core?

I was reading an article about early black holes found by JWST at Redshift 9. And saw that there was wonder at how large amounts of gas could collapse into a black hole as a theory. So my question is ...
WiFiSunset's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
160 views

On the Radiation Field of large Gas Giants

I am woring on creating a fictional star system, and I need to find an answer to a question to find an accurate way to depict this. I am aware that Gas Giants create a dangerous field of radiation ...
DanceroftheStars's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
100 views

Does rotation on their axis cause winds in gaseous planets?

As far as I know, as planets rotate around their axis, they can influence winds but not cause them (like the Coriolis effect) However, does this apply only for rocky planets? Do rotation alone in ...
vengaq's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
74 views

Sub brown dwarf cores

I’ve heard that the cores of sub-brown dwarfs (sub brown dwarfs mass objects that form the same way as stars and brown stars instead of forming like planets do.) are different from that of gas giants. ...
blademan9999's user avatar
-2 votes
2 answers
144 views

What would a gas giant, such as Uranus, look like if it were orbiting a sun like star at an Earthlike orbit?

This is a hypothetical. If a gas giant with the approximate mass and density of Uranus existed within the goldilocks range to support life around a star, what would be the conditions on the service. ...
Curious Gorge's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
210 views

At what point above Jupiter is the gravity Earth-like?

Jupiter is a massive planet. We get it. However, we have also heard that, since it has such a huge radius, at different elevations it is possible to experience different levels of gravity. We hear ...
user98816's user avatar
  • 469
2 votes
2 answers
48 views

Temperature of a gas giant 23 AU from Fomalhaut

If a gas giant, weighing about 30 Jupiter masses, orbited the A-type star Fomalhaut at 23 AU, what would its temperature be? Would it be warm enough to have ammonia clouds like Jupiter or Saturn, or ...
user98816's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
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Could a super-Jupiter exoplanet in the habitable zone have an axial tilt?

I’m wondering if a massive planet (maybe 10 times the mass of Jupiter) in the habitable zone of a G type star could have an axial tilt similar to earth or if gravitational forces would erode the tilt ...
Elhammo's user avatar
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-1 votes
1 answer
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Which one of the gas and ice giants has the least varying orbital characteristics? [closed]

Which one of the gas and ice giants of our solar system has the least varying orbital characteristics (obliquity, eccentricity etc.)?
איתי מרלוב's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
200 views

If you were standing on a habitable moon of a gas giant, what would the planet look like during the day vs the night? [closed]

If you were standing on the proplanetary side of a habitable moon of a gas giant, and the moon had a thick enough atmosphere to make the sky blue, how would the gas giant look during the day? Would it ...
Elhammo's user avatar
  • 1,087
2 votes
1 answer
144 views

Are there areas within Jupiter's magnetosphere without powerful radiation?

I know Jupiter has powerful radiation belts, but I'm wondering if there are places within the magnetosphere that are relatively calm. I'm asking about Jupiter (a gas giant we know) because I'm curious ...
Elhammo's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
58 views

How does this Toomre GI criteria have the period in the denominator?

I saw this equation in a literature review recently talking about the Toomre criterion for gravitational instability: Given here in section 2.1.1: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.06117.pdf, viz. But I am ...
WDUK's user avatar
  • 415
1 vote
0 answers
60 views

Could we optically observe metallic hydrogen in space?

As many calculations have been done on whether metallic hydrogen is metastable or not in low-pressure environment, It occurred to me that by the fact that we have not observed any metallic hydrogen so ...
C-Consciousness's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
226 views

Is the transition between ice giants and Jupiter-like gas giants somewhat fluid?

The ice giants Uranus and Neptune are often being distinguished from Saturn and Jupiter who consist mostly of hydrogen and helium, while the ice giants have more of heavier elements than hydrogen and ...
John's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
130 views

Spin-down of gas-giants during formation

In the paper https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.00457 about rotation rates of gas giants it says: "owing to accumulation of angular momentum stored in the source material, a planetary mass object should ...
sno's user avatar
  • 919
6 votes
2 answers
1k views

Gravity of a gaseous planet without a core

Both Jupiter and Saturn have rocky cores. Is there such of a thing as a gaseous planet without a core? And would a planet without a core have gravity?
Bookaholic's user avatar
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1 answer
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What is the meaning of grain opacity and why does it affect the formation time of gas giants?

While doing research for my presentation on the formation of gas giants, more specifically the "core-accretion model", I have been stumbling across the term "grain opacity" and don'...
Julian Saling's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
235 views

Could there be liquid water on Uranus? Are there any indications that there might be?

Like most planets, Uranus has a very cold outer atmosphere and a very hot core. What we see is a very thick primary atmosphere with plenty of hydrogen. Deeper in, we might suppose that water ...
Mike Serfas's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
105 views

Is there a link between the amount of swirling and vorticity in a gas giant's atmosphere and its distance to its Sun?

This is an empirical observation of mine: I have noticed that out of the 4 gas giants in our Solar System, Jupiter's atmosphere has the most visible swirls and complex cloud patterns, followed by ...
Hash's user avatar
  • 503
-1 votes
1 answer
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Maximum and minimum masses and sizes of giant planets?

What are the minimum & maximum masses and diameters of giant planets? Minimum end of the scale Earth has mass of 1 Earth mass and a mean radius of 6,371.0 kilometers, and thus a mean diameter of ...
M. A. Golding's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
107 views

Assuming a hypothetical system without gas but only solid rocks, how big of a planet can form through the coalescing of these rocks?

I have heard that gas giants are primarily huge solid bodies like regular rocky planets that exponentially gained more and more gas in their atmosphere through their increase in mass which they use ...
Hash's user avatar
  • 503
1 vote
1 answer
80 views

Moons within a Gas Giant

Assuming a gas giant is primarily gaseous past our visibility, is it possible that a moon traveling at a sufficient velocity would be able to exist within the atmosphere, or would terminal velocity ...
mkinson's user avatar
  • 195
3 votes
1 answer
241 views

Why don't we detect planets around OB stars and no terrestrial planets around A or early F stars?

Looking at an exoplanet database, I noticed that there are very few planets detected around main-sequence OBA stars, and most of them are gas giants/brown dwarfs. Why can't we detect low-mass planets ...
WarpPrime's user avatar
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11 votes
0 answers
207 views

What is the birth of a star like? [closed]

Here's what I'm curious about. So this hydrogen gas collects and at some point, it eventually becomes a star. What does that process look like? If you were there as a witness to the formation of a ...
Pete's user avatar
  • 241
-4 votes
1 answer
122 views

Can air/gas be slowed down by friction [closed]

Can wind/air that is moving at average speeds be slowed down by the cause of Friction? Also, Can Air bubbles in water be slowed down because of Friction? Please cite your sources.
Tardy's user avatar
  • 245
8 votes
1 answer
539 views

If the fifth gas giant in the early Solar System was completely ejected, where would it be now?

I've read about the possible 5th gas giant in the Solar System, and about its ejection about ~100 million years after the formation of the Solar System. However, I have not seen anything about its ...
WarpPrime's user avatar
  • 6,613
0 votes
1 answer
236 views

Could a star become a planet?

Could a star become a planet? I am asking this because the gas giants are ¨Failed Stars¨ and they are classified as planets in our solar system.
user avatar
26 votes
3 answers
4k views

Why can't stars be multicolored like gas giants?

Gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn have bands of different colors in their atmosphere. These are due to the rotation of the planets. Stars rotate too, so why do most stars have patches/blotches of ...
harada's user avatar
  • 705
6 votes
1 answer
736 views

Why do the solar system planets go rock-gas-ice instead of rock-ice-gas when moving away from the sun?

The sun and the solar wind seem to do a good job of fractionating lighter materials to the outer solar system and leaving heavier materials in the inner solar system. So we end up with rocky/metallic ...
Roger Wood's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
473 views

Life cycle of a gas planet?

I am interested in learning more about the (simplified) life cycle of gas planets which are not brown dwarfs (meaning less than 13 Jupiter masses). It obviously starts off with their creation within a ...
B--rian's user avatar
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-1 votes
1 answer
277 views

Why are gas giants (Jovian planets) spherical in shape? [duplicate]

If the core of the gas giant was square for instance, would the planet be square too?
Lucas Tan's user avatar
  • 147
5 votes
2 answers
219 views

How to calculate the frequency of a gas giant eclipsing the sun from a moon?

Say you have a moon around a gas giant which goes around a star. If the moon has an inclination of around 0° relative to the gas giant's orbit, the gas giant will eclipse the star every orbit of the ...
Astavie's user avatar
  • 71
1 vote
0 answers
41 views

Updrafts on Gas Giants

Gas giants put out a fair amount of heat from gravitational collapse, so there's bound to be quite a bit of upward moving winds. If Carl Sagan's idea about aerial ecologies pans out, could larger ...
Sam D. Jones's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
60 views

Qualities of gas giant atmospheres at a density of 1 gram per cubic centimeter

At what depth in the atmospheres of the gas giants does the density of their atmospheres equal 1 gram per cubic centimeter? What is the pressure and temperature at these depths? Are the radiations ...
user141802's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
62 views

What is the difference between aurorae and electroglow?

One of the discoveries of Voyager 2 at Uranus was a phenomenon called "electroglow", which as I understand it is related to charged particles interacting with the atmosphere that cause the ...
user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
394 views

What's the critical mass of a rocky planet before its gravity traps enough gas in its atmosphere to start becoming a gassy planet

Looking at the latest theories, I've noticed that most rocky planets are below a certain mass range. I speculate that maybe the way gas giants and gas dwarfs form is a rocky planet during the ...
Mr. Anderson's user avatar
22 votes
2 answers
3k views

Where do we define the "surface" of a gas planet?

Since gas giant consist of most gas components, where do we establish their "surface"? My take is basically to take the limit in which all light is opaque. For example, in this photo: The ...
Carlos Vázquez Monzón's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
241 views

Are there other planetary systems where gas giants are on the inside to rocky planet orbits?

I understand that formation theories for gas giants suggest they should be born further away where there is more gas for them to monopolize vs the sun, and then to form Hot Jupiters they need to ...
Axion's user avatar
  • 345
12 votes
1 answer
2k views

Why do gas giants have clearly delineated surfaces, whereas the Earth's atmosphere fades into space?

I've just seen this Forbes article. Why do gas giants appear to have clearly delineated surfaces, whereas the Earth's atmosphere fades into space? Is it just a matter of scale? Or is there some ...
fadedbee's user avatar
  • 223
1 vote
0 answers
76 views

Satellite grids around other planets [closed]

We send a lot of rovers to Mars, as interesting as the planet could possibly be. But why are we not putting satellite grids around planets that could transmit superficial probe data at the very least?...
dante5772's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
503 views

What is the gaseous-to-rocky ratio of exoplanets?

Around the Sun, there are as many gaseous planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) as there are rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars). Do other stars have similar gaseous-to-rocky ...
usernumber's user avatar
  • 17.4k
7 votes
1 answer
3k views

Is there a clear-cut difference between rocky and gaseous planets?

A gas giant planet is large enough that it retains a lot of hydrogen and helium. A rocky planet is one with a solid surface. That's the rule of thumb to distinguish between the rocky and gaseous ...
usernumber's user avatar
  • 17.4k
0 votes
1 answer
221 views

Would it be possible for life found on moon of rogue planet

I have heard that there are at least three Basic requirement for life exist in the universe, they are: Source of Energy Complex chemistry (including solvent/medium for chemical reaction) Protection ...
C.Calvert's user avatar
  • 101
2 votes
2 answers
271 views

Can a dying, swelling, star be rejuvinated by enveloping orbiting gas giants?

Many hot jupiter type exoplanets have been found, orbiting near their parent stars. At the end of a stars life, they swell up and sometimes envelop closely orbiting bodies. Combine these effects and ...
Alonda's user avatar
  • 293
16 votes
2 answers
806 views

Characteristics of the first planets in the Universe?

What would have the very first planets looked like, based on their most likely chemical compositions? For example: Were they mostly grey gas giants with atmospheres of hydrogen and helium, ...
Dave Jarvis's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
64 views

Is there any possibility that a gas planet turns into a star [duplicate]

Since the sun is made of one of elements hydrogen Why Saturn and jupiter doesnt turn into a star since they have a elements of hydrogen ?
roblox prisonlife's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
669 views

Are gas giants actually rare?

Kepler data suggests that the vast majority of planets are smaller than 4 Earth radii, with larger planets quickly becoming vanishingly scarce. Yet somehow, our own solar system harbours not just one, ...
Arkenstein XII's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
83 views

What would happen to the atmosphere of a rogue jovian planet?

Let's say we have a gas giant composed primarily of hydrogen and hydrogen-rich molecules that is ejected from its star system. As this planet embarks on its potentially infinite journey out into the ...
White Dwarf's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
104 views

Is there a term for asteroseismology as applied to giant planets?

Giant planets such as Jupiter have oscillations which enable analyses using the techniques of asteroseismology, for example Gaulme et al. (2011) detected global modes on Jupiter via radial velocity ...
user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
385 views

Birth of the Gas Giant Planets?

How does a gas giant planet form like Saturn and Jupiter, and why just gas? Why didn't they form any solid surface?
roblox prisonlife's user avatar