Scientists squint their eyes concerningly at Earth-sized shadows appearing on Jupiter's surface

A team of researchers has had their interest peak at the sight of mysterious "dark ovals" appearing on the surface of Jupiter, and given the size of Jupiter, these ovals are approximately the size of Earth.

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A new paper published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy details a NASA-supported group of researchers analyzing the disturbances on Jupiter's upper atmosphere. These "dark ovals" appear near Jupiter's poles, and according to the researchers, they may be an indication of the processes within Jupiter's strong magnetic field, specifically a disturbance in Jupiter's ionosphere.

The team looked at images of Jupiter snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2015 and 2022 and found the different atmospheric layers and the magnetic tornadoes that erupt within them are possibly causing these dark ovals to appear. The team explained that research such as this enables astronomers and scientists to further develop a more complete understanding of Jupiter and all-encompassing planetary processes.

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"In the first two months, we realized these OPAL images were like a gold mine, in some sense, and I very quickly was able to construct this analysis pipeline and send all the images through to see what we get," said Troy Tsubota, an undergraduate student and coauthor of the study at UC Berkeley

"The haze in the dark ovals is 50 times thicker than the typical concentration, which suggests it likely forms due to swirling vortex dynamics rather than chemical reactions triggered by high-energy particles from the upper atmosphere," said Xi Zhang, coauthor and UC Santa Cruz planetary science professor

"Studying connections between different atmospheric layers is very important for all planets, whether it's an exoplanet, Jupiter or Earth. We see evidence for a process connecting everything in the entire Jupiter system, from the interior dynamo to the satellites and their plasma tori to the ionosphere to the stratospheric hazes. Finding these examples helps us to understand the planet as a whole," said co-author Michael Wong, a planetary scientist at Berkeley