Chandra X-ray spotted a mysterious pulsing x-ray beacon from north pole of Jupiter!

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*** Puzzling X-rays from Jupiter! ***
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Astronomers using the Chandra X-ray Observatory have spotted a mysterious pulsing x-ray beacon near the north pole of the giant planet.

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March 7, 2002: Every 45 minutes a gigawatt pulse of x-rays courses through the solar system.

Astronomers are accustomed to such things. Distant pulsars and black holes often bathe the galaxy with blasts of x-radiation. But this time the source isn't exotic and far away. It's right here in our own solar system.

"The pulses are coming from the north pole of Jupiter," says Randy Gladstone, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and leader of the team that made the discovery using NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Above: Every 45 minutes an x-ray source blinks near Jupiter's north magnetic pole. This animation, based on data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, shows the hot spot pulsing 15 times during one complete 10-hour rotation of the giant planet.

"We weren't surprised to find x-rays coming from Jupiter," he continued. Other observatories had done that years ago. The surprise is what Chandra has revealed for the very first time: the location of the beacon -- surprisingly close the planet's pole -- and the regular way it pulses.

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There could be a quite simple explaination:

The northpole on earth has been suffering from meteorite bombardments for years along with the Aurora Borealis phenomona.

I would say that Jupiter must suffer from something similar, but I gather it's orbit of the sun would mean that it's occurance would fit into a different chronological cycle. (similar to how the earths tilt changes)

You could also guess that Jupiter's combined size would make it's north polar gravity far higher than that of earth, so more prone to attracting debris.

 

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MAYBE ITS A WORMHOLE!!!!!!!

But along with other wierd stuff, like the fact (I believe-wet1 correct me if I'm wrong) that Jupiter produces its own heat and radio signals, that in the future the planet'll probably be something like Amsterdam.

 

You are indeed correct, Pollux V!

Basically Juptier is a failed star. It did not gather enough material to become a star and give us a binary system as the majority of other systems are. If I remember correctly, it needed about 10 times the mass of what it is now to achieve ignition.

It does however produce and raditate more heat than it could gather from the sun at it's distance from our primary. It has also that tremendous radation belt, which makes inroads into the sun's solar wind.

A fasinating planet.

????????

 

The whole Jupiter being a failed star thing is REALLY very half-baked. For a start it formed as part of our star's accretion disc rather than from a stellar nursery as we have seen stars are born. It has nothing in common with our star apart from a large amount of hydrogen. And I believe young stars are thought to consume heavy water before getting into straight hydrogen fusion; Jupiter can't do that. I believe the ONLY thing Jupiter has in common with any star is hydrogen. But then, Earth has that too, althougha much smaller proportion. No, there is more than a failed ignition between Jupiter and a star I think.

 

Jupiter can not do it because there is not enough gravity to allow compression to reach the temperature needed to ignite. It would have had to gather this material during the planetary formation stage. Which it did not. In that sense it is indeed a failed star. After all there was enough material to create the sun and it does indeed shine. But there was not enough remaining for Jupiter to capture and hold on to. The material for making the extra mass could well have been in the accreation disk. It depends on what theory of planetary formation you follow. Some think that there was not enough time after ignition of the Sun for Jupiter to complete gathering of material before light pressure started moving the material out if the system.

While we're at it, what is your theory for why we have rocky inner planets and gas giant outer planets?

 

Since it's such a wierd place I meant that it may eventually fill up with future hippies , pornography shops, etc.

 

Maybe Arthur C. Clarke wasn't too far off the mark with his Monolith at the Jupiter - Io lagrange point. Much as I would like it to be something unusual, it is likely to be something relatively innocuous and natural.

The first thought off the top of my head was that this was a side effect of Jupiter having such a massive magnetosphere. Around Earth, the magnetosphere deflects away charged particles from the Sun with some leakage towards the poles. The charged particles interact with the atmosphere to make aurora (and very pretty it is as well...).
Now let's scale that up to Jupiter's proportions. Jupiter has a much more powerful magnetosphere and can accelerate charged particles to higher energies. Maybe those particles spiralling in to Jupiter's pole build up some sort of charge that gets discharged every 45 mins, much in the same way that a microwave oven makes microwaves by firing electrons at a tungsten target.

Don't mind me... I go off on tangents like this.

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Welcome to sciforums, Zenith.

Maybe you have something there. Interesting at the least.

 

A few years ago I would have said the more dense materials gathered in close, gas particles clumped together further out, all based on gravity and spin and all. But look at the planets people have been finding. Gas giants in around the orbit of Mercury for example. Weird stuff. The "rules" for planet formation have been constantly under revision since people began finding planets.

And I would say that lack of pressure-temperature for ignition is still not what is required for a ball of gas to become a star. The correct materials must be present. Jupiter does not have (as far as I know) the heavy water young stars are thought to consume. Otherwise you might as well say Earth would have been a star had it only been bigger. *shrug*