Regarding Jupiter... Why could we see evidence of the shoemaker/levy comet impact?

Question

I just learned that if you were to land on Jupiter that you would continue to fall as there is no ground. I also learned that you would be crushed by its immense gravity as you traveled to the planet's center.
My question is when the shoemaker/levy comet hit jupiter, Why didn't it fall to the center of the planet? Or even pass through it. If there is no ground why was there an impact?
They say the force of the impact caused material greater then the mass of the whole earth itself get ejected into space.... Was this gas? Was it rock? If there is no physical ground..... what did the comet smack into?
Gas?
Jupiter's atmosphere?
I just don't get it....

Answer 1

Jupiter's appearance is a tapestry of beautiful colors and atmospheric features. Most visible clouds are composed of ammonia. Water exists deep below and can sometimes be seen through clear spots in the clouds. The planet's 'stripes' are dark belts and light zones created by strong east-west winds in Jupiter's upper atmosphere. Within these belts and zones are storm systems that have raged for years. The Great Red Spot, a giant spinning storm, has been observed for more than 300 years.

The composition of Jupiter's atmosphere is similar to that of the Sun - mostly hydrogen and helium. Deep in the atmosphere, the pressure and temperature increase, compressing the hydrogen gas into a liquid. At depths about a third of the way down, the hydrogen becomes metallic and electrically conducting. In this metallic layer, Jupiter's powerful magnetic field is generated by electrical currents driven by Jupiter's fast rotation. At the center, the immense pressure may support a solid core of ice-rock about the size of Earth.
(http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Jupiter&Display=OverviewLong)


The first impact occurred at 20:15 UTC on July 16, 1994, when fragment A of the nucleus slammed into Jupiter's southern hemisphere at a speed of about 60 km/s. Instruments on Galileo detected a fireball which reached a peak temperature of about 24,000 K, compared to the typical Jovian cloudtop temperature of about 130 K, before expanding and cooling rapidly to about 1500 K after 40 s. The plume from the fireball quickly reached a height of over 3,000 km.[4] A few minutes after the impact fireball was detected, Galileo measured renewed heating, probably due to ejected material falling back onto the planet. Earth-based observers detected the fireball rising over the limb of the planet shortly after the initial impact.[5]

Astronomers had expected to see the fireballs from the impacts, but did not have any idea in advance how visible the atmospheric effects of the impacts would be from Earth. Observers soon saw a huge dark spot after the first impact. The spot was visible even in very small telescopes, and was about 6,000 km (one Earth radius) across. This and subsequent dark spots were thought to have been caused by debris from the impacts, and were markedly asymmetric, forming crescent shapes in front of the direction of impact.

Over the next 6 days, 21 discrete impacts were observed, with the largest coming on July 18 at 07:34 UTC when fragment G struck Jupiter. This impact created a giant dark spot over 12,000 km across, and was estimated to have released an energy equivalent to 6,000,000 megatons of TNT (750 times the world's nuclear arsenal). Two impacts 12 hours apart on July 19 created impact marks of similar size to that caused by fragment G, and impacts continued until July 22, when fragment W struck the planet.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker-Levy_9)

THats pretty much all that I can find. From my understanding, there is a "core" to speak of, but the comet fragments did not reach through the cloud lines.

Answer 2

If you were to 'gently' enter the atmosphere of Jupiter (like Galileo's probe did about 10 years ago), it would continue to fall. It entered at a fairly high speed, but at a trajectory that allowed it to slow, then deploy a parachute. Eventually, the heat & atmospheric pressure crushed the little probe, and it became part of Jupiter.

The fragments of Comet Shoemaker Levy hit Jupiter, it was traveling almost straight in, and at an extremely high speed - turning all it's kinetic energy into an explosion about the size of Earth. Jupiter's atmosphere is much denser than Earth's; in fact, when you get deep enough, planetologists refer to it's hydrogen in his area as 'metallic hydrogen' - because of it's density. You've probably heard about the comet/asteroid that caused the Tunguska explosion in 1908 - it exploded in our atmosphere, for pretty much the same reasons Shoemaker-Levy did, without ever striking the ground.

Answer 3

Jupiter is a gas planet, the density of the gas on it's surface is quite high, you see what the Earth's atmosphere does to the space shuttle when it hits the thinnest part of our atmosphere, those comets that hit Jupiter were travelling at a higher rate of speed than the shuttle so you can expect to see the results of such a collision.

Answer 4

If you are traveling fast enough, even hitting an atmosphere can have unfortunate and explosive effects. At a certain speed, the impact will vaporize the entire object rapidly enough that you end up with an explosion, and an object the size of the comet fragments hitting Jupiter at a speed of tens of thousands of miles an hour would have resulted in explosions at least a thousand times if not hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than a nuclear bomb.

Boom.

Answer 5

it was gas and could be a bit of jupiters iron core. jupiter is by far one of the most mysterious planets and i spend much time researching it. The main part that got ejected into space was the gas. unlike the earth, jupiter's atmosphere contains hevy gasses such as methane. there might be rock in jupiter but right now no one knows for sure. there might even be life such as extreamopholies (bacteria that can live in extream conditions) beneath it's massive gaseous layers/. But the answer to your question is gas. and they say the commet broke and part of it did travel to the planet's center.

Answer 6

Gas still has mass. So objects may travel through it, but it causes a desplacement in the gaseous mass that is Jupiter. When an object greater than the mass of earth collided it displaced a whole crap load of gaseous material. Us traveling through Jupiter would be like us diving into water, as opposed to the comet which would be like dropping the Empire State Building into a lake.

Answer 7

The gas of Jupiter's atmosphere gets so condensed and compressed that it becomes a liquid. This is the "ground" that Shoemake-Levy hit and displaced.

Answer 8

Hi. That was an amazing sight! The 'surface' is gas and the impacts disrupted that gas changing it's color. The center of Jupiter may be metallic hydrogen.

Answer 9

There is a solid core on Jupiter just like there is a core on all the gas giants

Answer 10

I did work for NASA and though that is out of my field I would say there is ground some where under that gas cloud and not all that far as it was still going pretty fast when it hit the ground part.