News Space

A planetary body may have smashed into Jupiter, creating its weird core

The theory tested in computer simulations could help explain why Jupiter’s interior defies logic

Jupiter collision illustration

WRECKING BALL A planetary body about 10 times as massive as Earth may have smashed into Jupiter billions of years ago, creating the oddly diffuse core seen in the gas giant today.

Astrobiology Center, Japan

By Maria Temming

This article is only available to Science News subscribers.

Subscribers, enter your e-mail address to access our archives.

Not a subscriber?

Science News is a nonprofit.

Support us by subscribing now.

More Stories from Science News on Space

  1. dwarf galaxy HSC J1631+4426
    Astronomy

    A record-breaking, oxygen-starved galaxy may be full of gigantic stars’ shrapnel

    By Ken Croswell
  2. illustration of an asteroid hitting Antarctica
    Planetary Science

    A meteor may have exploded over Antarctica 430,000 years ago

    By Sid Perkins
  3. Ptolemaic model of planets
    Cosmology

    Physicists’ devotion to symmetry has led them astray before

    By Tom Siegfried
  4. remnant of a 1a supernova
    Physics

    Uranium ‘snowflakes’ could set off thermonuclear explosions of dead stars

    By Emily Conover
  5. image of the big dipper constellation in the sky
    Astronomy

    Here’s why humans chose particular groups of stars as constellations

    By Emily Conover
  6. Diagram of low-frequency radio waves in galaxy cluster Abell 2877
    Astronomy

    The ‘USS Jellyfish’ emits strange radio waves from a distant galaxy cluster

    By Ken Croswell
  7. Perseverance parachuting down to Mars
    Space

    50 years ago, experiments hinted at the possibility of life on Mars

    By Carolyn Gramling
  8. M87's black hole with polarization of light waves
    Astronomy

    A new black hole image reveals the behemoth’s magnetic fields

    By Maria Temming

From the Nature Index

Paid Content