NASA’s Juno probe is still out there in space, orbiting Jupiter and sending back incredible images of our solar system's largest planet. For years we’ve known that its surface is a tempestuous hellscape, covered in giant storms many times the size of our planet. Now experts say those storms might not be so different from ours.
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00:00NASA's Juno probe is still out there in space, orbiting Jupiter and sending back incredible
00:09images of our solar system's largest planet.
00:11For years, we've known that its surface is a tempestuous hellscape, covered in giant
00:15storms many times the size of our planet.
00:18We've also been able to tell from orbit that some of those storms include lightning.
00:22And now, for the first time, scientists say it's very much like lightning you might find
00:26on Earth.
00:27NASA scientists have found data that has revealed just how the lightning initiates
00:30on Jupiter, beginning with an almost rhythmic pulsing in the storm clouds, before the lightning
00:35erupts and moves deeper towards the center of the gas giant.
00:38Experts have captured images and videos of these events over the years, showing what
00:42it looks like when it happens in the upper atmosphere.
00:45Now they say these are just like the strongest examples of lightning on our planet.
00:49After all, bigger planet, bigger storms, bigger lightning.
00:52Lightning on Jupiter has long been of interest to astronomers, as on Earth, lightning oxidizes
00:56diatomic nitrogen in the air.
00:58However, Jupiter is made up of mostly hydrogen and helium, with the interactions between
01:03the flashy phenomena and molecular hydrogen still being a bit of a mystery to scientists.