Macabre tale of giant Jupiter's dissolving heart

摘要

Even the mighty can lose heart. New calculations suggest that Jupiter's rocky core is dissolving like an antacid tablet plopped in water. Giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn are thought to have begun their lives as solid bodies of rock and ice. When they grew to about 10 times the mass of Earth, their gravity pulled in gas from their birth cloud, giving them thick atmospheres made mainly of hydrogen around their solid cores.