Extreme Weather Phenomena on Other Planets

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Extreme Weather Phenomena on Other Planets

By Trista - January 22, 2021

8. Triton, Neptune’s bizarre moon, have active ice volcanoes that spew frozen nitrogen and methane.

Triton’s surface is full of large and small volcanos that regularly erupt in the solar system. Triton’s icy surface’s first detailed images said that cryogenic volcanism, which occurs at super cold temperatures, is the most reasonable explanation for the dark plumes. The active ice volcanoes are said to be as high as 20 miles. The discovery of the ice volcanoes is shocking because Triton was believed to be a dead moon. Triton is so cold that its volcanic activity is driven by fluid ice and compounds such as nitrogen, changing from a solid to a liquid to a gas. The moon’s volcanism is exceptionally similar to that on Earth except that it is icy.

The volcanoes on Triton appear to be a gentler version of the volcanoes on Earth. The frozen nitrogen and methane that spew out of Triton’s volcanoes are caught in the moon’s light winds and are gently deposited in a path up to 45 miles away from the vents – which can be up to two miles in diameter. The gas quickly refreezes as crystals that likely form a mushroom cloud that is caught in Triton’s thin atmosphere and deposited downwind. The atmospheric haze that the spacecraft discovered above Triton may have been produced by volcanic eruptions. The driving force behind Triton’s volcanoes appears to be nitrogen. If the temperature below the surface of Triton warms up by less than 20 degrees, the liquid nitrogen explodes into a gas that erupts through the surface with volcanic force.

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7. Wolf 1061c is tidally locked and has one side in permanent sunlight, and the other stuck in darkness.

The newly discovered planet, Wolf 1061c, sits alongside two other worlds. It is one of the nearest stars to the sun. It is said to be rocky, similar to Mars. Wolf 1061c has a mass that is slightly over four times the mass of Earth and orbits its star every 18 days. Wolf 1061c is too hot for life, but the Wolf 1061c star is much cooler than our sun. Due to the planet being tidally locked, one side will always be facing the star. This positioning changes the circumstances on the surface of the planet substantially. It leads to one extremely hot side and one very cold side. Scientists have discovered that the hot side’s heat is circulating to the cold side due to the high winds that travel between them. In between those two extreme sides is a narrow band with a surprisingly pleasant climate.

Of all the alien worlds, Wolf 1061c is the only one that is potentially habitable. When scientists are searching for planets that could sustain life, they are essentially looking for a planet with nearly identical properties to Earth. In short, the conditions would have to be just right. The planet cannot be too far or too close to its parent star. If it is too close, it would be too hot. If it is too far away, then it may be too cold, and water would freeze. Wolf 1061c’s orbit changes at a much faster rate, which means that the climate there could be quite chaotic. It could cause the frequency of the planet freezing over or heating up to be quite severe.

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6. Jupiter is a stormy planet that is best known for its Great Red Spot.

The Great Red Spot has been present in Jupiter’s atmosphere for more than 300 years. It is now known that the Great Red Spot is a storm that is spinning like a cyclone. Unlike a low-pressure hurricane, the Red Spot rotates in a counterclockwise direction in the southern hemisphere, showing a high-pressure system. The winds inside this storm reach speeds of 270 miles per hour. The Red Spot is the largest known storm in the solar system. It is almost twice the size of the entire Earth. The long lifetime of the Red Spot is likely because Jupiter is a mainly gaseous planet. It possibly has liquid layers but lacks a solid surface, which would dissipate the storm’s energy. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically.

Like Earth, Jupiter’s storms tend to form closer to the equator and then drift toward the poles. Since Jupiter has no land, there is much less friction because there is nothing to rub against. There’s just more gas underneath the clouds. Jupiter also has heat leftover from its formation comparable to the heat it gets from the sun. The temperature difference between its equator and its poles are not as great as on Earth. A geometric arrangement of storms would form if the storms were surrounded by a ring of winds turning in the opposite direction from the spinning storms. The presence of these anticyclonic rings causes the storms to repel each other rather than merge.

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5. One of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, has been said to have a saltwater ocean.

Researchers have identified that sodium chloride, the stuff in table salt, exists on Europa’s surface. Europa’s surface is covered in a 62-mile saltwater ocean enclosed in a layer of ice. Since the exterior is essentially formed with frozen seawater, the discovery suggests that Europa’s hidden sea is drenched in table salt. That is an essential piece in understanding the possibilities for life in the alien world. To analyze Europa’s composition, astronomers study the light emanating from its surface, splitting into a rainbow-like spectrum. However, as you already know, ordinary table salt is white and gives off a featureless spectrum. For years, astronomers have also argued that another type of salt, magnesium sulfate, was present on Europa’s surface. Europa’s seas could ultimately prove to be too salty for life as we know it to exist there.

A more equitable mixture of water and salt could allow life to thrive there, especially if the ocean is as active as our own. The water gets pulled into the seafloor around the hydrothermal vents. Then, it is jettisoned back out from the vents themselves on Earth. In the process, magnesium is captured within the rocks, whereas sodium and chlorine escape. Europa’s table-salt surface could suggest that the moon’s seawater is cycled similarly and even point towards hydrothermal vents. If this is true and an accurate representation of the ocean’s composition, then Europa’s ocean would be more similar to what we see on Earth. However, scientists could not quite say what the quantities of salt are beneath the ice.

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4. Auroras from neutron stars are created on planets, including Draugr.

PSR 1257+12 was first discovered in 1992. It is a pulsar that is located 2,300 lightyears away from the sun. The pulsar contains a planetary system with three known extrasolar planets. The planet Draugr gets its name from a monstrous undead creature from mythology. It is one of three small, rocky planets. When a massive star explodes, its core forms a neutron star, an Earth-sized object with ridiculously high density. However, scientists don’t expect planets around giant stars to sustain stellar explosions. Nor do they expect them to keep orbiting the newly formed neutron stars. However, three worlds are doing just that around the neutron star, PSR B1257+12.

The neutron stars emit a lot of harmful radiation, including x-rays and gamma rays severely damaging to life on Earth. The three planets going around the neutron star, Ergo, are consistently bathed in radiation. The planets are considered to be as lifeless as planets can be. Planets that are around neutron stars might be a pretty sight from a distance. The neutron star’s radiation can create dazzling auroras on the worlds, similar to Earth and Jupiter. The discovery of planets around a pulsar was unexpected, considering that a pulsar could host planetary companions.

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3. Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, although it is not the closest planet to the sun.

The interior of Venus is made of a metallic iron core that is roughly 2,400 miles wide. Its molten rocky mantle is approximately 1,200 miles thick. Although Venus is not the planet closest to the sun, its dense atmosphere traps heat in a runaway version of the greenhouse effect that warms Earth. As a result, temperatures on Venus reach 880 degrees Fahrenheit, which is more than hot enough to melt lead. Any spacecraft that has landed on the planet only lasted a few hours before being destroyed. Venus’s atmosphere consists mainly of carbon dioxide with clouds of sulfuric acid and only trace amounts of water.

The surface of Venus is arid. Ultraviolet rays from the sun evaporate water quickly, keeping the planet in a prolonged molten state. There is no liquid water on its surface today because the scorching heat created by its ozone-filled atmosphere would cause the water just to boil away. Venus is brighter than any other planet or even any star in the night sky because of its highly reflective clouds and closeness to our planet. However, Venus takes 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis, which is the slowest of any major planets. Unusual stripes in the upper clouds of Venus are referred to as ultraviolet absorbers because they strongly absorb light in the blue and ultraviolet wavelengths. They are soaking up a tremendous amount of energy. Roughly two-thirds of Venus’s surface is covered by flat, smooth plains marred by thousands of volcanoes.

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2. Scientists have found a layered mix of ice and sand that represent the last traces of long-lost polar ice caps on Mars.

Remnants of ancient ice sheets have been found buried a mile beneath Mars’ North Pole. The team found layers of sand and ice that were as much as 90 percent water in some places. If melted, the newly discovered ice would be equal to a global layer of water around Mars that is at least five feet deep, which could be one of the largest water reservoirs on the planet. The layers of ice is a record of past climate on Mars in much the same way that tree rings are a record of past climate on Earth. They suspect the layers formed when ice accumulated at the poles during past ice ages on Mars.

Each time the planet warmed, a remnant of the ice caps became covered by sand, which protected the ice from solar radiation and prevented it from dissipating into the atmosphere. Shockingly, the total volume of water locked up in these buried polar deposits is roughly the same as all the water known to exist in glaciers and buried ice layers at lower latitudes on Mars. Studying this unique weather pattern and record of past polar glaciation could help determine whether Mars was ever habitable. Understanding how much water was available globally versus what is trapped in the poles is vital if you’re going to have liquid water on Mars. There can be all the right conditions for life, but if most of the water is locked up at the poles, it becomes challenging to have suitable amounts of liquid near the equator.

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1. Saturn has a unique weather pattern of psychedelic clouds that are driven by internal heating.

Saturn rotates extremely fast but takes a little over 29 years to make one revolution around the sun. It is hard to determine the number of moons revolving around Saturn because it is difficult to distinguish between tiny moons and the numerous ice chunks composing Saturn’s smaller ringlets. As one of the four gas giants, Saturn’s atmosphere is similar to that of Jupiter’s. The atmosphere is mostly composed of hydrogen with lesser amounts of helium and even smaller methane and ammonia quantities.

Discovered by Voyage in 1981, the cloud pattern at Saturn’s north pole continues to amaze scientists. The lower-altitude hexagon may influence what happens above. Saturn’s cloud levels host the majority of the planet’s weather, including the pre-existing north polar hexagon. Scientists have identified that the points of the hexagon rotate around its center at almost the same rate Saturn rotates on its axis. Besides, a jet stream air current flows eastward at up to 220 miles per hour. Roughly seven years ago, an image of the storm was taken to demonstrate its unusual composition. Nothing like the hexagon has been seen in any other world. It is about 20,000 miles wide and approximately 60 miles down into Saturn’s atmosphere.

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