 Hey guys, with all the hype about the recent Juno spacecraft achieving orbit at the giant planet Jupiter We thought we'd bring you guys a few facts about Jupiter that might just blow your mind So here goes Jupiter is our protector planet for as long as time has existed most of the giant extinction level Comets and asteroids that were on a collision course with Earth had been pulled into Jupiter by its enormous Gravitational field leaving life on Earth mostly preserved for millions of years In 1610 Galileo discovered Jupiter and its four primary moons Europa, Loh, Calisto and Ganymede, which today are known collectively as the Galilean moons This was the first time a celestial body was observed circling anything other than the moon orbiting Earth It changed the way we viewed the heavens forever This provided excellent support for Polish astronomer Nicolai Copernicus and his theory that Earth was not at the center of the universe As the largest planet in the solar system Jupiter has more than twice the mass of the rest of the solar system combined not counting the Sun of course Jupiter has an atmosphere very much like a star consisting mainly of hydrogen and helium and Planetary scientists think that if it had got about 80 times larger it would have turned into a star As it is with its four massive moons and many other smaller ones Jupiter is a miniature solar system in itself Jupiter is so massive that over 1300 earth-sized planets would be required to match the volume of the gas giant Does that not just completely blow your mind? Wait till you hear this The magnetic bands of Jupiter are divided into light zones and dark belts caused by constant pounding By strong east to west winds that have been clocked at 400 miles an hour Zones of white clouds in the upper atmosphere consist of a frozen crystallized form of ammonia Dark clouds containing other chemicals are found in the dark belts and blue clouds are observed at the deeper visible levels These climatic features are far from stagnant and change dramatically over short periods of time Besides the possibility of diamonds raining down from the atmosphere the feature that stands out the most on Jupiter has got to be the giant super storm called the great red spot Though we don't actually know how old the spot is But astronomers on earth have been observing it since we have had telescopes But it could actually be millions of years old for all we know Rotating counterclockwise the great spot is at its widest over three times the diameter of earth Winds in the center blow at 225 miles an hour The great spot constantly changes in size and sometimes even seem to disappear only to return every time With a magnetic field almost 20,000 times stronger than that of the earth Jupiter is by far the magnetic king of our planetary system Using an intensified band of electrons Jupiter traps electrically charged particles that continuously bombard the system with the level of radiation over a Thousand times that of the fatal level for human beings This radiation is so intense that it can damage even the most heavily shielded NASA spacecraft Like the Galileo probe or the recently orbiting Juno spacecraft Jupiter has a magnetosphere that reaches out a mine blowing two million miles in the direction of the Sun Trailing off into a tail that extends an even more mind-boggling 600 million miles behind the gas giant as it orbits around the home star Jupiter takes just under 10 hours to complete a full rotation on its axis Compared with 24 hours here on earth another area in which Jupiter excels at is the blast of powerful Neutral radio waves it produces creating eerie noises when received by the antennas of shortwave radios here on earth The radio waves though inaudible to the human ear can make for some strange Entertainment when converted to audio signals by earthbound radio equipment these radio emissions are naturally Generated by instabilities and plasma in the magnetosphere of the gas giant They cost quite a stir until they were verified as being of natural origin rather than from some alien species NASA was pleasantly surprised in 1979 when the Voyager 1 spacecraft Discovered three rings around the equator of Jupiter these rings are much fainter than the rings of Saturn So it could not be detected with earth-based scientific instruments Since it's the largest body in the solar system besides the Sun the gravitational forces Jupiter produces may have assisted in literally shaping the rest of the solar system And maybe even allowing life to exist as it does today on earth According to a study published in Nature Jupiter might have swung both Uranus and Neptune out to where they currently reside in what was a violent show of sheer Planetary might and according to an article in Science magazine along with help from Saturn Jupiter may have also hurled a massive amount of debris in at the inner planets During the early history of the solar system In fact scientists are now pretty sure that the gas giant is keeping some asteroids from impacting the planet and Recent events such as the common shoemaker levy 9 impact have shown that it can and does rain in at what would be Catastrophic impacts had they hit earth yet another bragging point for Jupiter is Callisto the most heavily cratered object in the solar system Callisto is the farthest out of the four Galilean moons and takes around one earth week to orbit its giant host Planet since it orbits out beyond the radiation belt of Jupiter Callisto suffers from less tidal influences than any of the other Galilean moons So there you have it a few things about Jupiter that are stunning. We hope you enjoyed the show Thanks for watching and remember the ways by which we arrive at knowledge are hardly less wonderful than the discovery of These things themselves