There's Something Hiding Under Jupiter's Clouds, Scientists Find

"The enormous storms of impenetrable clouds covering Jupiter's surface make it nearly impossible for us to get a glimpse of what lies below. Any spacecraft attempting to get a closer look would be vaporized, melted, or crushed if it attempted to sail through. NASA's Galileo spacecraft, for instance, went dark almost immediately when it intentionally plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere back in 2003."

"While Jupiter - a giant ball of swirling gases and liquids - isn't believed to have a true surface, scientists have been trying to get a better sense of its layers. Now, using data from NASA's Juno and Galileo missions, a team of scientists at the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Chicago have created a highly detailed computational model of Jupiter's atmosphere."

Enormous storms and impenetrable clouds prevent direct observation of Jupiter's interior, and spacecraft attempting to penetrate the atmosphere are destroyed, as with Galileo's 2003 plunge. Data from NASA's Juno and Galileo missions enabled creation of a detailed computational model of Jupiter's atmosphere that accounts for chemistry and fluid movements. The model indicates Jupiter contains about 1.5 times the Sun's oxygen, far higher than prior estimates of one-third. Much of the oxygen exists as water, whose phase-dependent behavior with temperature complicates layer mapping. The results support formation by accreting icy material near or beyond the frost line.

Read at Futurism