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Questions tagged [gas-giants]

Questions regarding massive planets composed of layers of gases, such as hydrogen and helium, surrounding a solid/liquid core.

3 votes
1 answer
140 views

What would Uranus look like from light years away?

It has been suggested that at least some of the "super-puff" planets may actually be ordinary planets with rings. Saturn, for instance, may appear as a "super-puff" to an alien ...
Joe Peters's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
143 views

How can ultraviolet planetary images help us in research?

Recently I was browsing through Ultraviolet images clicked by Cassini, Galileo and Hubble Space Telescope on OPUS and though they all seemed quite attractive, I couldn't quite figure out what all ...
Dhruv Nayak's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
93 views

About the formation of ice giants and gas giants

I asked this previously in Worldbuilding stack exchange, and they recommended that I take it here. How far out from a star (lets just say one identical to our sun, for simplicities sake) where can gas ...
DanceroftheStars's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
84 views

JWST Early Black Holes: Gas Collapsed To Metallic Hydrogen Core?

I was reading an article about early black holes found by JWST at Redshift 9. And saw that there was wonder at how large amounts of gas could collapse into a black hole as a theory. So my question is ...
WiFiSunset's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
180 views

On the Radiation Field of large Gas Giants

I am woring on creating a fictional star system, and I need to find an answer to a question to find an accurate way to depict this. I am aware that Gas Giants create a dangerous field of radiation ...
DanceroftheStars's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
109 views

Does rotation on their axis cause winds in gaseous planets?

As far as I know, as planets rotate around their axis, they can influence winds but not cause them (like the Coriolis effect) However, does this apply only for rocky planets? Do rotation alone in ...
vengaq's user avatar
  • 1,017
2 votes
1 answer
91 views

Sub brown dwarf cores

I’ve heard that the cores of sub-brown dwarfs (sub brown dwarfs mass objects that form the same way as stars and brown stars instead of forming like planets do.) are different from that of gas giants. ...
blademan9999's user avatar
-2 votes
2 answers
167 views

What would a gas giant, such as Uranus, look like if it were orbiting a sun like star at an Earthlike orbit?

This is a hypothetical. If a gas giant with the approximate mass and density of Uranus existed within the goldilocks range to support life around a star, what would be the conditions on the service. ...
Curious Gorge's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
365 views

At what point above Jupiter is the gravity Earth-like?

Jupiter is a massive planet. We get it. However, we have also heard that, since it has such a huge radius, at different elevations it is possible to experience different levels of gravity. We hear ...
user98816's user avatar
  • 469
2 votes
2 answers
53 views

Temperature of a gas giant 23 AU from Fomalhaut

If a gas giant, weighing about 30 Jupiter masses, orbited the A-type star Fomalhaut at 23 AU, what would its temperature be? Would it be warm enough to have ammonia clouds like Jupiter or Saturn, or ...
user98816's user avatar
  • 469
3 votes
1 answer
169 views

Could a super-Jupiter exoplanet in the habitable zone have an axial tilt?

I’m wondering if a massive planet (maybe 10 times the mass of Jupiter) in the habitable zone of a G type star could have an axial tilt similar to earth or if gravitational forces would erode the tilt ...
Elhammo's user avatar
  • 1,107
-1 votes
1 answer
120 views

Which one of the gas and ice giants has the least varying orbital characteristics? [closed]

Which one of the gas and ice giants of our solar system has the least varying orbital characteristics (obliquity, eccentricity etc.)?
איתי מרלוב's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
285 views

If you were standing on a habitable moon of a gas giant, what would the planet look like during the day vs the night? [closed]

If you were standing on the proplanetary side of a habitable moon of a gas giant, and the moon had a thick enough atmosphere to make the sky blue, how would the gas giant look during the day? Would it ...
Elhammo's user avatar
  • 1,107
4 votes
2 answers
216 views

Are there areas within Jupiter's magnetosphere without powerful radiation?

I know Jupiter has powerful radiation belts, but I'm wondering if there are places within the magnetosphere that are relatively calm. I'm asking about Jupiter (a gas giant we know) because I'm curious ...
Elhammo's user avatar
  • 1,107
3 votes
1 answer
63 views

How does this Toomre GI criteria have the period in the denominator?

I saw this equation in a literature review recently talking about the Toomre criterion for gravitational instability: Given here in section 2.1.1: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.06117.pdf, viz. But I am ...
WDUK's user avatar
  • 415
1 vote
0 answers
61 views

Could we optically observe metallic hydrogen in space?

As many calculations have been done on whether metallic hydrogen is metastable or not in low-pressure environment, It occurred to me that by the fact that we have not observed any metallic hydrogen so ...
C-Consciousness's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
269 views

Is the transition between ice giants and Jupiter-like gas giants somewhat fluid?

The ice giants Uranus and Neptune are often being distinguished from Saturn and Jupiter who consist mostly of hydrogen and helium, while the ice giants have more of heavier elements than hydrogen and ...
John's user avatar
  • 1,538
3 votes
2 answers
137 views

Spin-down of gas-giants during formation

In the paper https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.00457 about rotation rates of gas giants it says: "owing to accumulation of angular momentum stored in the source material, a planetary mass object should ...
sno's user avatar
  • 1,464
6 votes
2 answers
1k views

Gravity of a gaseous planet without a core

Both Jupiter and Saturn have rocky cores. Is there such of a thing as a gaseous planet without a core? And would a planet without a core have gravity?
Bookaholic's user avatar
  • 1,559
1 vote
1 answer
76 views

What is the meaning of grain opacity and why does it affect the formation time of gas giants?

While doing research for my presentation on the formation of gas giants, more specifically the "core-accretion model", I have been stumbling across the term "grain opacity" and don'...
Julian Saling's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
275 views

Could there be liquid water on Uranus? Are there any indications that there might be?

Like most planets, Uranus has a very cold outer atmosphere and a very hot core. What we see is a very thick primary atmosphere with plenty of hydrogen. Deeper in, we might suppose that water ...
Mike Serfas's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
110 views

Is there a link between the amount of swirling and vorticity in a gas giant's atmosphere and its distance to its Sun?

This is an empirical observation of mine: I have noticed that out of the 4 gas giants in our Solar System, Jupiter's atmosphere has the most visible swirls and complex cloud patterns, followed by ...
Hash's user avatar
  • 503
0 votes
1 answer
2k views

Maximum and minimum masses and sizes of giant planets?

What are the minimum & maximum masses and diameters of giant planets? Minimum end of the scale Earth has mass of 1 Earth mass and a mean radius of 6,371.0 kilometers, and thus a mean diameter of ...
M. A. Golding's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
114 views

Assuming a hypothetical system without gas but only solid rocks, how big of a planet can form through the coalescing of these rocks?

I have heard that gas giants are primarily huge solid bodies like regular rocky planets that exponentially gained more and more gas in their atmosphere through their increase in mass which they use ...
Hash's user avatar
  • 503
1 vote
1 answer
93 views

Moons within a Gas Giant

Assuming a gas giant is primarily gaseous past our visibility, is it possible that a moon traveling at a sufficient velocity would be able to exist within the atmosphere, or would terminal velocity ...
mkinson's user avatar
  • 195
3 votes
1 answer
297 views

Why don't we detect planets around OB stars and no terrestrial planets around A or early F stars?

Looking at an exoplanet database, I noticed that there are very few planets detected around main-sequence OBA stars, and most of them are gas giants/brown dwarfs. Why can't we detect low-mass planets ...
WarpPrime's user avatar
  • 6,684
11 votes
0 answers
212 views

What is the birth of a star like? [closed]

Here's what I'm curious about. So this hydrogen gas collects and at some point, it eventually becomes a star. What does that process look like? If you were there as a witness to the formation of a ...
Pete's user avatar
  • 241
-4 votes
1 answer
126 views

Can air/gas be slowed down by friction [closed]

Can wind/air that is moving at average speeds be slowed down by the cause of Friction? Also, Can Air bubbles in water be slowed down because of Friction? Please cite your sources.
Tardy's user avatar
  • 255
8 votes
1 answer
617 views

If the fifth gas giant in the early Solar System was completely ejected, where would it be now?

I've read about the possible 5th gas giant in the Solar System, and about its ejection about ~100 million years after the formation of the Solar System. However, I have not seen anything about its ...
WarpPrime's user avatar
  • 6,684
0 votes
1 answer
294 views

Could a star become a planet?

Could a star become a planet? I am asking this because the gas giants are ¨Failed Stars¨ and they are classified as planets in our solar system.
user avatar

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