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2025

2025 January 4th:

A GHOSTLY NUDGE FROM JUPITER

Without consciousness there would be no science, so let's view science as one mental construct, while fiction is another.  In fact, consider them as two dimensions of reality (fiction itself being a definite reality inside our heads whatever the accuracy or inaccuracy of its outside references).

In my current phase of browsing through my collection of astronomy magazines I came across an article titled Jupiter's Deep Mystery, by Thomas Dobbins and William Sheehan (Sky & Telescope, December 1999, p118-23), which make me feel as if the OSS solid-surface version of the planet - the view of it as a world with explorable places on it - were stretching out a ghostly tentacle to make my spine tingle with the idea, "Perhaps it's true after all".

Not quite enough to materialise a real hope, but at least an approach, the ghostly haunting of a nearness to hope, is provided by some observations of the South Equatorial Belt (SEB).  What brought me up sharp was to learn that eruptions in the SEB, when timed, have appeared to synchronize with the giant planet's axial rotation in such a way as to suggest a fixed origin somewhere down below!

To quote from the article:

...Surprisingly, our deepest insight into the mechanism and meaning of SEB revivals is not the brainchild of a theoretical astrophysicist but of an amateur astronomer, Elmer J. Reese.  Although he now lives in quiet retirement in Longview, Texas, Reese was a prolific contributor to the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO) during the heyday of amateur planetary studies in the 1950s and early 1960s...  

...Despite the fact that most of Reese's observations were made with a humble 6-inch Newtonian reflector, his work was of such high quality that he was able to make the transition from amateur to professional astronomer.  In 1963 he was asked to join the staff of New Mexico State University Observatory...

...He reasoned that because these phenomena [SEB revivals] "invariably begin with the sudden appearance of a small dark spot near the latitude of the middle of the South Equatorial Belt, we might infer that material reaches the visible surface from an eruption of some kind..."

Then, confirmation of the idea that the source of the eruptions is fixed in the solid core of the planet came from subsequent correlation with output from Jovian radio sources.  Bingo!

Too good to be true, maybe, but still, mysterious and suggestive - and who really knows what's down there?

...According to John Rogers, Director of the Jupiter Section of the British Astronomical Association (BAA), the Reese sources are "sites of potential instability at which SEB eruptions tend to be triggered, but, given our present knowledge of the planet, they cannot be 'volcanoes' as originally envisaged.  They might perhaps be long-lived circulations or waves or even floating objects at a deep level...  Whatever the Reese sources may be, the instability always breaks first over them, just as clouds on Earth first form over mountains."

So there you are.  Next step: revise, amend, or refute our "present knowledge of the planet"!