Where might Jupiter's heat source come from?

Question

Jupiter appears to give off more heat than it receives from the Sun, meaning that it has an additional heat source in its interior. Note that radioactive decay is unlikely since solid rock and metal make up only a small fraction of the planet's total mass.

Answer 1

Jupiter is two and a half times more massive than all the other planets in the solar system put together. It hasn't completed its formation, yet... it is still contracting. The excess heat is the heat of contraction. The planet is shrinking by about 2cm per year... when it was first formed 4.5 Billion years ago it was much hotter and about twice its current diameter.

Jupiter would need to be about 75 times more massive in order for it to start fusing hydrogen. Even though it has sometimes been referred to as a "failed star", it has a long way to go before reaching the size necessary to qualify as a star.

The amount of heat produced inside Jupiter is nearly equal to the total solar radiation received... this is generated by the Kelvin-Helmholtz Mechanism through adiabatic contraction.. Saturn also radiates heat in this same way (slow gravitational compression)..

Answer 2

Jupiter is so large that it almost became a small star, I suspect that it's mass has been able to hold a lot of the heat that formed in it's creation.

Answer 3

the greater effective storms devour and feed off of the smaller ones, it somewhat is what keeps them going and from time to time turning out to be. Jupiter has fairly some diverse climate bands shifting in opposite instructions, so there's no danger for a typhoon, as quickly as started, to lose steam via drifting off too a techniques north or south. that's forced to stay interior the slender selection of the climate band, it somewhat is quite like a supercharged jet circulation. each of those jet streams carry thousands of storms interior of, and those storms do not possibly have the alternative of having out of how of the different. for this reason they merge. for this reason the super purple Spot is so vast. for this reason it has lasted centuries. So in a nutshell, the super purple spot isn't the only same typhoon that has lasted thousands of years. that's purely a region the place many smaller storms save feeding jointly. an identical element takes place on the earth from time to time (see: the suited typhoon), even with the undeniable fact that here on the earth they finally die off. area notice: fairly some human beings are employing a typhoon reference, it somewhat is advantageous, yet you do not elect a land mass to kill a typhoon. All you will possibly be able to desire to do is take away the warmth tropical waters it feeds off of (fairly some hurricanes die off interior the cooler Atlantic without ever hitting land). typhoon Sandy, case in point, wasn't a efficient typhoon (it replaced into purely a Cat a million while hitting NJ). What made it so undesirable replaced into that it mixed with a low tension device on an identical time as severe tide, and it did so under an entire moon while tides are even greater than familiar at the beginning. this mixture, not the typhoon itself, is what brought about this variety of flooding (and the wear that accompanied) this section hasn't seen in centuries. it somewhat is basically what's going on on Jupiter. The sheer style of storms are severe and those efficient, fueling situations continuously combine jointly to maintain those storms alive and in many situations turning out to be.

Answer 4

Residual heat from it's formation. As the cloud of gas and dust that jupiter formed from collapsed, it heated up.

Answer 5

There used to be a great deal of speculation that Jupiter is just large enough to be a radio frequency, or brown star.