Thanks, OtherBruce!TheOtherBruce wrote: ↑Mon Oct 07, 2019 4:13 pmThe Wikipedia page on Jupiter suggests any original core could have been eroded by convection currents of liquid metallic hydrogen; there might or might not be anything left of it. As always, though, we need more data to figure it out for sure.
One of the fascinating points for me is that the actual gaseous atmosphere of Jupiter appears to be just a thin top layer, like the Earth's atmosphere. The deep regions outside the core (if there is one) are metallic hydrogen, compressed until it behaves like a metal, even though it's hot enough to be a liquid. In between it's a kind of fluid, not really gas or liquid, just getting denser as you go deeper. No weirder than the Earth's internal structure, I suppose.
I guess Jupiter is a little bit like the Sun, then. The Sun most definitely contains enough silicon, nickel, iron and other stuff to form a big solid core inside. But for now we have every reason to believe that the Sun is gaseous through and through. When the Sun eventually becomes a white dwarf, I guess it will be partly solid.
Admittedly Jupiter is mostly liquid and not gaseous, which makes it quite unlike the present-day Sun. Or maybe I should say that most of Jupiter is fluid, not liquid.
Ann
