Jupiter has finally been observed spitting out X-rays in high-energy wavelengths.
This process generates soft X-rays, as previously discovered. Now, hard X-rays have been found too. It wasn't an easy detection to make, since the high-energy X-rays are actually quite faint, but that, the researchers said, doesn't explain why Ulysses couldn't detect them. The answer, they found, lies in the way the hard X-rays are generated.
When electrons are accelerated along Jupiter's magnetic field lines, they end up entering the planet's atmosphere at high speed. When these electrons enter the vicinity of atomic nuclei, and their electric fields, they are abruptly deflected and decelerated. However, their kinetic energy has to go somewhere, according to the law of the conservation of energy, so it gets converted into X-radiation., or braking radiation.
These mechanisms each produce a different light profile, the researchers said. At higher energies, bremsstrahlung X-rays should be fainter at higher energies, which would explain why Ulysses never found them. The team modeled the data including the bremsstrahlung mechanism, and not only did it match the NuSTAR observations, it showed that the emission is outside Ulysses' sensitivity range. So far so good, but we've only just begun to probe the phenomenon.
For example, while NuSTAR could detect hard X-rays in the general region of the Jovian auroras, it was unable to pinpoint a precise emission point.said astronomer William Dunn"We still have so many questions about these emissions and their sources. We know that rotating magnetic fields can accelerate particles, but we don't fully understand how they reach such high speeds at Jupiter.
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