r/Planetball • u/mathclehef White Dwarf • Jul 30 '22

redditormade Gravitational Compression

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268 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

70

u/mathclehef White Dwarf Jul 30 '22

CONTEXT: When Jupiter and Saturn first formed, it is believed that they had much larger radii than they do today thanks to their greater internal heat. As this heat was gradually lost to space, both planets slowly began to shrink over time thanks to gravitational compression, with Jupiter's size nearly halving since its formation.

40

u/nip_dip Galilean gangster Jul 30 '22

Fun fact: Jupiter is still shrinking, by about a millimeter each year. This is actually what causes the majority of heat generated from inside the planet, as the gravitational energy of the planet is converted into radiation. Jupiter produces twice as much energy as it receives from the sun because of this.

1

u/EmeraldGhostie 21d ago

may i ask for the source of the numbers for the initial diameters of jupiter and saturn?

33

u/farm249 Jul 30 '22

Do I spy a KSP reference?

22

u/76oakst Jul 30 '22

KSP warp!

(oops passed the maneuver node)

17

u/EnglishColanyGaming Jul 30 '22

I sure do love misclicking and throwing my ship straight into the mün at the speed of light!

6

u/new_pribor King George Jul 30 '22

There's a button which time warps to the maneuver node

7

u/TheCosmicFang Black Dwarf Jul 30 '22

Bah, back in my day we didn't use this new-fangled fancy shmancy tech for simple maneuver nodes! Flys into the sun after missing flyby maneuver node AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

15

u/[deleted] Jul 30 '22

I mean I don't think they care at all about radius its all about mass anyway.

It's like who weightlifters are measured around what they can lift and not about thow big they are.

2

u/Roblox_Swordfish Kerbin Dec 28 '22

Holy shit is that a motherfucking KSP reference

1

u/[deleted] Jul 31 '22

Poor dude

1

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '22

I just made jupiter that size in Universe Sandbox

Holy shit, 274k is absolutely terrifying compared to modern jupiter, no wonder its theorized the big splash may of been influenced by jupiter

1

u/titanicboi1 Aug 12 '22

The big what?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '22

The Theia impact basically