Jupiter

Proto-Solar System

The original solar system comprised only the giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Jupiter and Saturn are not gaseous hydrogen planets as is currently currently believed. The four great planets all formed from ice and dust particles in the solar nebula. Dust alone in the inner solar system could not accrete without the ice to act as binders and were pushed by the solar wind out to the radius of Jupiter and beyond. The dust particles performed the vital function of catalyzing the formation of molecular species such as H2 and O2 from single atoms and the subsequent formation of the ices, primarily water, due to the greater abundance of oxygen.  As a result of the formation of the ices on the dust particles, all the elements of the periodic table were embedded in the ice which formed the giant planets. The differing masses of the great planets reflect the amount of ice and dust that was available at their various radii from the Sun. They accreted initially as snowflakes, then the accreting of fluffy ice bodies, which eventually produced planetesimals with significant gravitational attraction. One of these accreted rapidly enough to heat up and form a rocky iron core some ten or twenty times the mass of the Earth. In spite of the currently accepted notion that Jupiter and Saturn are gaseous, it has been found necessary to include large rocky-iron cores, thought necessary to attract and hold the imagined hydrogen.

The formation of the proto-ice-planets, just the solid cores, required some tens of millions of years. Studies of distant, young sun-like stars show that the gaseous hydrogen is lost from the system in only one million years, so the vast amounts of hydrogen currently thought to comprise Jupiter and Saturn were long since lost before the proto-planets became large enough to capture it. Thus Jupiter and Saturn are not, as currently believed, 'onions' whose layers are composed of various exotic states of hydrogen. In fact, all four giant planets comprise the same basic materials.

Great Planets Formed Cold

After the initial hot accretion stage, the process gradually slowed because of the great time required for the material in the same orbit, but at other azimuths around the Sun, to become incorporated in the main body. This material formed bodies from the same material as the main proto-planets. These planetesimals approached the proto-planet at relatively slow velocity, melted upon entry into its thick atmosphere and fell as snow. The formation of Jupiter required some 100 million years to complete and and the more distant planets took correspondingly longer. As a result, these planets were formed cold. There is no reason to believe that after the proto-planet formed, the accreting material changed. As these planets grew, the cold and high pressure in their interiors led to the formation of gas hydrates, also known as clathrates. These comprise 'cages' constructed of water molecules that typically enclose a 'foreign' atom or molecule. The higher strength of these clathrate structures permitted them to resist the very compression which led to the hypothesis that Jupiter and Saturn must be gaseous.

Great Planets as Shields

Most text books pay lip service to the 'protection' provided to the Earth by the giant planets, claiming that they act as shields, attracting asteroids and comets that could threaten the terrestrial planets. But scientists fail to recognize the great effectiveness with which they accomplish this. The 'spots' found on the great planets are evidence of such impacts. They are the result of gases still emanating from the impact craters on the surface of these frozen planets. These same hot gases drive the multiple zonal wind jets and the refractory elements in the gases crystallize to color the belts, zones and spots. Moreover, the thick, heavy gases in their atmosphere act as thermal blankets, spreading the heat and disguising the fact that it originates in one large crater.  The temperature excesses of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune are the result of the hot gases heating their atmospheres, while the bodies of these planets remain cold. In fact, Jupiter radiates almost three times as much energy as it absorbs from sunlight, and Saturn an amount equal to the absorbed sunlight.  Astrophysicists currently believe that this implies their internal temperatures are 50,000 and 25,000 K respectively, because they are thought to be gaseous. I maintain that this enormous energy excess is due to heat from a nuclear conflagration still taking place in the crater out of which Venus was born only 6,000 years ago.  This nuclear furnace is continually supplied with hydrogen fuel as the heat breaks down more and more of the gas hydrates surrounding the crater, thereby explaining its longeviety. Their rings and many satellites were formed by the material blasted into the local space by these great impacts or by a vast jet of material which streamed from the craters in millennia subsequent to the impacts.

Evidence that Jupiter is a Solid Planet

There is much evidence now available corroborating the solid makeup of Jupiter. A solid boundary below the atmosphere is required to explain the formation of the zonal wind belts that encompass the planetjust as the trade winds on Earth. . The fact that the Great Red Spot has remained at the same latitude (-23 degrees) for over the three hundred and forty years that it has been observed, is clear evidence that its source is on the solid surface of the planet.

Theorists long ago predicted that there would be three prominent cloud layers in the Jovian atmosphere, based on the notion that the interior is hot and the planet is gaseous. But the Galileo atmospheric probe did not find any of these layers. This failure was sloughed off by claiming that the probe entered a 'non-typical' region of descending clouds, a claim that was proven incorrect by 'motion pictures' taken by the Cassini probe as it passed Jupiter. The Galileo probe also measured less water than theorized, because most of the water is frozen into the cold body of the planet.

When the comet fragments of Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter, the more massive ones produced huge atmospheric plumes, whose spectra revealed the presence of a number of heavy elements never before seen on Jupiter. Of particular interest, these plumes, which were as large as the Earth, only appeared six to ten minutes after the larger comet fragments disappeared into the clouds. The clear implication is that the more massive comet fragments penetrated the atmosphere and struck the solid surface with such force that a great explosion occurred. The mushroom clouds produced by the impacts, which contained all the elements in the body of the planet, then rose through the atmosphere, taking six to ten minutes to reach the cloud-tops where they became visible. These surface impacts also produced shock waves which can be seen propagating from the impact points, but only from the most massive comet fragments.

Birthplaces of the Terrestrial Planets

The impacts on the great planets performed an even more important function. The material which rebounded from the most energetic of these impacts formed the terrestrial planets. In fact, the myths of the oldest cultures on Earth describe the events surrounding the creation of Venus as a result of an immense impact on Jupiter 6,000 years ago. The details of this process and the evidence for its young age are explained in the section on Venus and an extensive scientific paper, listed under 'Recent Papers' on this website. The Galilean satellites Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto and the fifty-some smaller satellites of Jupiter formed from material that rebounded from the same impact, but which was not given sufficient velocity to escape Jupiter. As a result, each terrestrial body, Venus, priori-Mars, Earth and the Moon were created from one of the great planets as the result of high energy impacts. Each has a unique birth date, and possibly different 'parents.' This is corroborated by the great difference (800 million years) in the ages of the oldest rocks on Earth compared to the Martian meteorites.