Stunning patterns in Jupiter鈥檚 atmosphere have been replicated more accurately than ever before in the lab 鈥� using a rotating tub filled with water.
at Aix-Marseille University in France and his colleagues wanted to know how the swirls and whorls on Jupiter鈥檚 surface connect to what is happening deep inside the planet. Instead of exactly replicating the planet鈥檚 hydrogen and helium atmosphere, they turned to experiments with water.
They built a cylindrical tank 1 metre across, filled it with water, then set it to rotate at about 75 revolutions per minute. This made the water creep up the edges of the tank, forming a strongly curved meniscus on the water鈥檚 surface similar to that seen when swirling a glass of water. While any single property of this curved surface wasn鈥檛 right for emulating Jupiter, all of them put together made it susceptible to processes very similar to those on the surface of the planet, said Le Bars in a in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 4 March.
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His team focused on jets in Jupiter鈥檚 atmosphere that wrap around the planet like long, stormy stripes. They have been observed for centuries, but scientists only recently began to understand why they form. One key ingredient for making a Jovian jet is thought to be a small-scale injection of energy, like a local thunderstorm that then has a cascading effect across the planet. The researchers mimicked this by adding 128 small water pumps to the bottom of their tank. Once switched on, these pumps pushed out and sucked in small amounts of water which, after about 10 minutes, made Jovian jet-like patterns form on the water鈥檚 surface.
Though this is not the first experiment emulating a gas giant in the lab, it takes the approach to the next level, says at the University of Oxford. He says the researchers got the balance of all the various forces acting on the water to be closer than ever before to how forces affect fluids in Jupiter鈥檚 atmosphere. 鈥淏eing able to reproduce [Jovian jets] in the lab is a major achievement and speaks to how well we are starting to understand them,鈥� he says.
But the rotating jetted tank is not yet a perfect match for Jupiter鈥檚 conditions and cannot reproduce all oddities of its atmosphere, like collections of cyclones at the planet鈥檚 poles. The researchers are now working on creating them by swirling the water in their tub in a more complicated way.
