Strange lightning on Jupiter may be caused by ammonia snowballs

By Leah Crane

The Juno spacecraft has spotted a new type of lightning on Jupiter, unlike anything we’ve seen before, and it can be caused by strange scoops of ice and ammonia.

Planets have long believed that lightning from Jupiter occurs in the same way as that of Earth: through liquid water and ice interacting in clouds and accumulating an electric charge. This was supported by the fact that we had only seen lightning from a layer of water clouds deep below the tops of the clouds that we consider to be the “surface” of Jupiter.

But now, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has spotted lightning coming from an area much higher in the planet’s atmosphere, where it’s far too cold for liquid water. “It’s very different from anything happening on Earth, and it was a big surprise – completely different from the assumption of where lightning occurs on Jupiter and how it works,” Heidi Becker told Jet NASA Propulsion Laboratory in California, member of the Juno team.

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Instead of pure liquid water, the researchers found that this strange lightning bolt could be caused by liquid ammonia acting as an antifreeze. This would create what they called “mushballs” of a mixture of ammonia and water, surrounded by water ice. The strange high-altitude lightning could occur when these fungi collide with ice particles and build up an electrical charge.

“It would be kind of like a dirty snowball with a crisp, crunchy crust and a chewy center,” Becker says. “As it is being thrown in updrafts and downdrafts, there would be more ice around, much like rolling a snowball to make it bigger. “

These gooey snowballs could then penetrate deep into Jupiter’s interior, solving another mystery – the question of why the interior doesn’t appear to contain as much ammonia gas as we thought. Ammonia can hide in mushballs, bringing thunder.

Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038 / s41586-020-2532-1

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