UPV / EHU scientists have published the first results on the recent impact of a superbolide with the planet Jupiter in the prestigious journalAstrophysical Journal Letters. The study concludes that the impacts are much more frequent than on Earth, sinceJupiter, with its enormous gravity, draws wandering objects in the Solar System towards it, acting in a sense as a “protective umbrella” for our planet.
On June 3, Anthony Wesley, the Australian amateur astronomer who had already detected a much larger impact last summer, discovered a brief flash of light in the atmosphere of the planet Jupiter. The phenomenon was also recorded by another fan, Christopher Go, from the Philippines. Both obtained video observations of the flash that corresponded to the entry into the atmosphere of a small cometary object. This was thethe first time the flash produced by a collision on another planet in the Solar System was detected from Earth. Alerted the great observatories of the world, including the Hubble space telescope, observed the place of the impact without discovering any variation in the planet’s atmosphere. After intense work, an international team of astronomers led by Professor Ricardo Hueso is now publishing this article about the nature of the impact.
According to the analyzes carried out, the flash of light in Jupiter’s atmosphere was caused by theimpact of an object about 10 meters in diameter at a speed of about 70 km / s(250,000 km / hr). On Earth, objects of somewhat smaller dimensions collide with our planet every few decades. These objects disintegrate in the upper layers of the atmosphere generatinglarge fireballs known as bolidesor, when the object is several meters in diameter,superbolides. One of these superbolides, produced by a much larger object (30-50 m in diameter), struck the Siberian region of Tunguska in 1908.
The new impact clearly detected on Jupiter indicates that probablythe fall of objects of a few meters on that planet is more frequent than previously thought and much higher than that registered on Earth. For objects of the same size, these impacts are much more energetic on Jupiter due to its greater gravity and produce intense flashes of light but only a few seconds long. As could be seen in June, these flashes can be detected from Earth with small telescopes, which opens the possibility of knowing how many of these objects, remnants of the formation of the Solar System, remain orbiting the outer regions of our planetary system.
