An international team of astronomers, led by Yamila Miguel (SRON/Leiden Observatory), has found that Jupiter’s gaseous envelope doesn’t have a homogeneous distribution. The inner part has more metals than the outer parts, adding up to a total of between 11 and 30 earth masses, meaning 3–9% of Jupiter’s total mass. This is a high enough metallicity to conclude that kilometer-sized bodies—planetesimals—must have played a role in Jupiter’s formation. It will be published on June 8 in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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Source: Phys.org