Jupiter: Gas or solid surface: Impact of Shoemaker Levi 9?

Question

So I'm watching this science show about Jupiter and it says that there is no solid surface of the planet that it's mostly gas with a molten core.

Then they talk about the impact of Shoemaker Levi - 9 and how it "impacted" on the surface - when the the impact plume had subsided, there was evidence of a crater.

If the planet is gas, how can Shoemaker Levi - 9 "Impact" and leave a crater?

Answer 1

Yes, I can understand your confusion when that show talked about Jupiter's surface. Jupiter DOES have a kind of surface, but it's made out of dense gas. If you fell into it you'd just keep on falling downward because the gas molecules would easily be pushed aside by your moving body mass. However, if you were falling at about 50-thousand miles per hour those molecules couldn't move away from you as quickly. Instead they'd compress more and more ahead of you and heat up. Now, if you weighed several thousand tons and were falling into Jupiter at 50-thousand miles per hour the gas molecules would be compressed enormously and heat up to temperatures so high that the surrounding surface of Jupiter would explode like a nuclear bomb going off.

Answer 2

It "impacted" the stratosphere, and the "crater" was a hole in the clouds. There were several fragments; fragment "G" was about 2 or 3 km across, and struck Jupiter with an estimated energy equivalent to 6,000,000 megatons of TNT. The holes in the clouds mostly were gone in about 6 hours, although the storms caused by the impacts were visible for many days.

Answer 3

The impact was on the atmosphere and it did not leave a crater, just disturbed ares in the clouds that lasted for many months.