Jupiter-The Gas Giant

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun, after Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. It is the closest of the gas giants- the huge planets made up almost entirely of gas that dominate the Outer Solar System. Beyond Jupiter lie the gas giants Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and finally icy Pluto, the smallest and outermost planet.

Massive Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. It is bigger than all the other planets put together and 1300 larger than Earth alone. With its family of sixteen moons, some as big as planets, the Jupiter system is a small solar system of its own right.

Like all the planets in the Solar System, Jupiter moves around the Sun following a nearly circular path called an orbit. The time it takes to complete one orbit is the length of Jupiter’s year, known as a Jovian year. Because Jupiter is much further from the sun than Earth, its orbit is much longer and a Jovian year lasts nearly 12 Earth years.

Jupiter lies 778 million kilometers (483 million miles) from the Sun – about as far as you would travel if you flew around Earth 20,000 times. But Jupiter’s distance from Earth is continually changing and depends on the positions of the two planets in their orbits. They are closest when they line up on opposite sides of the Sun.

Imagine you are about to join a mission to Jupiter. The journey will be very long – you will be away for about ten years. The spacecraft will be built in orbit around Earth, and will need to have some kind of artificial gravity, since the bones and muscles of the astronauts weaken from lack of exercise, so artificial gravity is necessary. The spacecraft will also need lots of storage space.

From Earth, Jupiter looks like a large, yellow star. At its closest to Earth it is brighter than any other object in the sky, apart from the Sun, our Moon and Venus – our nearest neighboring planet. With binoculars or a small telescope, Jupiter’s circular shape can be seen, slightly squashed at the top and the bottom, with four fainter close to it. These are Jupiter’s four biggest satellites.

The most easily recognizable and popular details on Jupiter's face are the brown and cream stripes, and the big red spot.The Jovian day is only ten hours long. Despite being the largest planet in the Solar System, its day is the shortest.

Like Earth, Jupiter has Lightning and Auroras, better known as northern and southern lights. These can be seen as flashes of light on Jupiter's dark side and shimmering rings of light on the poles.

The land of Jupiter cannot be seen due to the very dense, swirling streams of cream, brown, red and occasionally blue clouds. These clouds are just the top layer in a ball of gas thousands of kilometers deep. The biggest features on Jupiter are wide bands of clouds that encircle the planet, giving it a stripped appearance. The clouds are stretched out this way by Jupiter’s rapid rotation which creates powerful high winds.

The upper clouds are nearly all cream-coloured. Other colours appear are the colours of the inner layer and appear where there are holes in the cream layer. The holes are created by areas of high pressure in the planet’s atmosphere. On Earth, high pressure causes clear blue skies, while low pressure produces clouds and bad weather. The same principle applies on Jupiter, but here the high pressure just creates gaps in the top layer of clouds rather than completely clear skies.

Brown and cream are the most common types of clouds on Jupiter, but there are others- blue clouds are located at the deepest levels of the planet's atmosphere, and red clouds can be found at even higher levels than the cream ones. Because Jupiter's atmosphere gets warmer as it gets deeper, the different cloud layers also match different temperatures- blue clouds are warmest, then brown and cream and finally the uppermost red clouds, like the Giant Red Spot, are the coldest.

Interesting Facts

1. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."

2. "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt"

3. Almonds are members of the peach family.

4. The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.

5. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.

6. Ingrown toenails are hereditary.

7. The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

8. "Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."

9. There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

10. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicros copicsilicov olcanoconiosis.

11. The only other word with the same amount of letters is its plural: pneumonoultramicros copicsilicovolca noconiosesl.

12. The longest place-name still in use is Taumatawhakatangiha ngakoauauotamate aturipukakapikim aungahoronukupok aiwe-nuakit natahu , a New Zealand hill.

13. Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reinade los Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, L.A.

14. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

15. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

16. Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.

17. Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.

18. Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.

19. The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

21. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

23. There is a seven-letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the,there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

24. Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

26. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

27. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

28. Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

30. The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti

31. 'Stewardesses' is the longest English word that is typed with only the left hand.

33. The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways; the following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

34. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

35. Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."

36. Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian seal for that reason.

37. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

38. The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead."

39. The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases

Sixty Amazing-but- True Facts

o In the weightlessness of space a frozen pea will explode if it comes in contact with Pepsi. o The increased electricity used by modern appliances is causing a shift in the Earth's magnetic field. By the year 2327, the North Pole will be located in mid-Kansas, while the South Pole will be just off the coast of East Africa. o The idea for "tribbles" in "Star Trek" came from gerbils, since some gerbils are actually born pregnant. o Male rhesus monkeys often hang from tree branches by their amazing prehensile penises. o Johnny Plessey batted .331 for the Cleveland Spiders in 1891, even though he spent the entire season batting with a rolled-up, lacquered copy of the Toledo Post-Dispatch. o Smearing a small amount of dog feces on an insect bite will relieve the itching and swelling. o The Boeing 747 is capable of flying upside-down if it weren't for the fact that the wings would shear off when trying to roll it over. o The trucking company Elvis Presley worked at as a young man was owned by Frank Sinatra. o The only golf course on the island of Tonga has 15 holes, and there's no penalty if a monkey steals your golf ball. o Legislation passed during WWI making it illegal to say "gesundheit" to a sneezer was never repealed. o Manatees possess vocal chords which give them the ability to speak like humans, but don't do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound. o SCUBA divers cannot pass gas at depths of 33 feet or below. o Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an ODD number of whiskers. o Replying more than 100 times to the same piece of spam e-mail will overwhelm the sender's system and interfere with their ability to send any more spam. o Polar bears can eat as many as 86 penguins in a single sitting. o The first McDonald's restaurant opened for business in 1952 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and featured the McHaggis sandwich. o The Air Force's F-117 fighter uses aerodynamics discovered during research into how bumblebees fly. o You *can* get blood from a stone, but only if contains at least 17 percent bauxite. o Silly Putty was "discovered" as the residue left behind after the first latex condoms were produced. It's not widely publicized for obvious reasons. o Approximately one-sixth of your life is spent on Wednesdays. o The skin needed for elbow transplants must be taken from the scrotum of a cadaver. o The sport of jai alai originated from a game played by Incan priests who held cats by their tails and swung at leather balls. The cats would instinctively grab at the ball with their claws, thus enabling players to catch them. o A cat's purr has the same romance-enhancing frequency as the voice of singer Barry White. o The typewriter was invented by Hungarian immigrant Qwert Yuiop, who left his "signature" on the keyboard. o The volume of water that the Giant Sequoia tree consumes in a 24-hour period contains enough suspended minerals to pave 17.3 feet of a 4-lane concrete freeway. o King Henry VIII slept with a gigantic axe. o Because printed materials are being replaced by CD-ROM, microfiche and the Internet, libraries that previously sank into their foundations under the weight of their books are now in danger of collapsing in extremely high winds. o In 1843, a Parisian street mime got stuck in his imaginary box and consequently died of starvation. o Touch-tone telephone keypads were originally planned to have buttons for Police and Fire Departments, but they were replaced with * and # when the project was cancelled in favor of developing the 911 system. o Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water. o Calvin, of the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, was patterned after President Calvin Coolidge, who had a pet tiger as a boy. o Watching an hour-long soap opera burns more calories than watching a three-hour baseball game. o Until 1978, Camel cigarettes contained minute particles of real camels. o You can actually sharpen the blades on a pencil sharpener by wrapping your pencils in aluminum foil before inserting them. o To human taste buds, Zima is virtually indistinguishable from zebra urine. o Seven out of every ten hockey-playing Canadians will lose a tooth during a game. For Canadians who don't play hockey, that figure drops to five out of ten. o A dog's naked behind leaves absolutely no bacteria when pressed against carpet. o A team of University of Virginia researchers released a study promoting the practice of picking one's nose, claiming that the health benefits of keeping nasal passages free from infectious blockages far outweigh the negative social connotations. o Among items left behind at Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Afghanistan were 27 issues of Mad Magazine. Al Qaeda members have admitted that bin Laden is reportedly an avid reader. o Urine from male cape water buffaloes is so flammable that some tribes use it for lantern fuel. o At the first World Cup championship in Uruguay, 1930, the soccer balls were actually monkey skulls wrapped in paper and leather. o Every Labrador retriever dreams about bananas. o If you put a bee in a film canister for two hours, it will go blind and leave behind its weight in honey. o Due to the angle at which the optic nerve enters the brain, staring at a blue surface during sex greatly increases the intensity of orgasms. o Never hold your nose and cover your mouth when sneezing, as it can blow out your eyeballs. o Centuries ago, purchasing real estate often required having one or more limbs amputated in order to prevent the purchaser from running away to avoid repayment of the loan. Hence an expensive purchase was said to cost "an arm and a leg." o When Mahatma Gandhi died, an autopsy revealed five gold Krugerrands in his small intestine. o Aardvarks are allergic to radishes, but only during summer months. o Coca-Cola was the favored drink of Pharaoh Ramses. An inscription found in his tomb, when translated, was found to be almost identical to the recipe used today. o If you part your hair on the right side, you were born to be carnivorous. If you part it on the left, your physical and psychological make-up is that of a vegetarian. o When immersed in liquid, a dead sparrow will make a sound like a crying baby. o In WWII the US military planned to airdrop over France propaganda in the form of Playboy magazine, with coded messages hidden in the models' turn-ons and turn-offs. The plan was scrapped because of a staple shortage due to rationing of metal. o Although difficult, it's possible to start a fire by rapidly rubbing together two Cool Ranch Doritos. o Napoleon's favorite type of wood was knotty chestnut. o The world's smartest pig, owned by a mathematics teacher in Madison, WI, memorized the multiplication tables up to 12. o Due to the natural "momentum" of the ocean, saltwater fish cannot swim backwards. o In ancient Greece, children of wealthy families were dipped in olive oil at birth to keep them hairless throughout their lives. o It is nearly three miles farther to fly from Amarillo, Texas to Louisville, Kentucky than it is to return from Louisville to Amarillo. o The "nine lives" attributed to cats is probably due to their having nine primary whiskers. o The original inspiration for Barbie dolls comes from dolls developed by German propagandists in the late 1930s to impress young girls with the ideal notions of Aryan features. The proportions for Barbie were actually based on those of Eva Braun. o The Venezuelan brown bat can detect and dodge individual raindrops in mid-flight, arriving safely back at his cave completely dry.