Jupiter’s collisions

Credit: Thomas Meier, UZH, Dept. of Astrophysics

The Juno mission has provided detailed measurements of Jupiter’s gravitational field, from which information about its internal structure can be obtained. Several models that fit the measurements suggest that the planet has a dilute (fuzzy) core (a core that does not have a sharp boundary in terms of composition and density), with heavy elements extending to nearly half of Jupiter’s radius. It is currently unknown how this dilute core has formed, but one hypothesis is that the collision between a large planetary embryo and the proto-Jupiter could have mixed the heavy elements of the core into the mantle. Shown is a temperature slice from a simulation with 1 billion particles of an oblique collision between proto-Jupiter and a 10 Earth-Mass impactor.