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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

The heavy diet that made Jupiter so big

Analysis of the gravitational pull exerted by the giant planet helps to explain its formation.
Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere from NASA's Juno spacecraft includes several of the planet's southern jet streams.

Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, but a new analysis suggests that it has heavy metals at its heart. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS, Tanya Oleksuik

Billions of years ago, as the Solar System was forming, Jupiter grew big by gobbling up kilometre-sized space rocks1.

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Nature 606, 843 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01710-2

References

  1. Miguel, Y. et al. Astron. Astrophys. 662, A18 (2022).

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