AS101 Study Guide - Final Guide: Gnu Compiler Collection, Metallic Hydrogen, Thermosphere
Document Summary
It seems peculiar to talk about atmospheres for the gas giants when they are mostly just that gas but their gaseous layers are remarkably similar to terrestrial atmospheres just more of them. We have learned about jovian atmospheres (down to their liquid cores) from some earth-bound observations but more recently from nasa"s galileo spacecraft, which dropped a probe into jupiter"s atmosphere to a depth of. Finally we get to the central core, a mixture of hydrogen compounds, rocks and metals, under extreme pressure and temperature but having a mass 10 times that of earth. Saturn, on the other hand, being almost as big but only 1/3rd as massive, has a density of 0. 7 g/cc (water is 1. 0 g/cc) so that saturn would float in a sea of water. The interior of saturn looks much the same as jupiter"s with proportionately less metallic but more liquid hydrogen. Uranus and neptune have no metallic hydrogen layer.
