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Asked by to Ben, Emily, Jemma on 25 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Emily Hayward answered on 25 Jun 2014:
Great question Patelyash2323!
In the water zone sadly we are not space experts, but I will try my best to answer this for you….In space its a vacuum which is a bit different from how things work here on earth….like when you drop something in space it doesnt fall as there isnt gravity like we have here, and thats why spacemen can walk upside down. Because there isnt gravity in space then the gasses arent drawn away and dont escape in the way if we leave a tank of gas open it would empty itself. This is part of the reason, another part is that jupiter is HUGE! And big things attract things, so as the centre is so big it helps keep all of the gasses inside as they want to be near the centre. With there being so many gasses and such a big centre they all try to get to the centre holding the plannet together, and its still very big due to all of the other gasses in the way preventing the outside ones getting to the inside. Does this make sense? If not just comment and I will try to describe it better!
Great question though, and a real challenge to answer 🙂
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Jemma Rowlandson answered on 25 Jun 2014:
Hi!
I love all these space questions! 🙂 the gases on Jupiter do not float away for the exact same reason the Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t, which is gravity. Gravity is an invisible force between two objects that attracts them towards each other. The bigger the object, the stronger the gravity is. The Sun is so huge that it pulls our entire solar system towards itself!
Jupiter is so big you can fit over 1300 Earth’s inside it (but you can fit 1.3 million Earth’s inside the Sun!). This means it’s gravity is much stronger than other planets. The centre of Jupiter (it’s core) is made of rock, it then has layers and layers of gases piled on top of each other. These gases weigh each other down, and gravity also pulls them all towards the centre of the planet.
For the gases to escape they would need lots of energy to travel really fast and beat gravity. If you’ve ever seen a space shuttle launch you can see just how much energy it takes to escape from Earth! Well because Jupiter is even more massive the gas would need even more energy to escape, which is pretty hard to do!
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Ben Butler answered on 25 Jun 2014:
cracking question patelyash2323,
Like the others have said. The main reason the gases don’t escape is because Jupiter is SO big. The bigger something is the more gravity it has. Humans have gravity, but we’re so small that we would never ever notice it.
Jupiter is so big that its gravity is strong enough to stop all the gases from escaping. If you were standing on Jupiter, you would weigh 2.5 times more than you do on Earth. That would make moving around pretty difficult!
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