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Re: The outer planets


-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>
To: meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com
<meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 8:31 PM
Subject: Re: The outer planets


|>My question from scratch is:  Couldn't our outer gaseous planets be former
|>comets trapped in orbit around our sun during the early stages of the
|>formation of our solar system?  They have the same gases and a small rocky
|>core.   There are two immediate, obvious problems:  They are very big and
|>where's the ice?
|
|Yes, I'm sure Jupiter has sucked in thousands of comets over the past
|4.5 billion years.

Stop.

I realize the concept may be somewhat inconceivable:-),  but I am not asking
if Jupiter has sucked in any comets, obviously Jupiter's last name is
Oreck:-)
My question is, could Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, have been large
comets themselves before coming to an inactive or dormant state known as a
gaseous 'planet'?   Your answer below seems to help point in that direction.


Cheers,
Julia
The water (or ice) is still on Jupiter.
|Jupiter is believed to have three cloud layers in its atmosphere.
|At the top are clouds of ammonia ice; beneath that ammonium-hydrogen
|sulfide crystals; and in the lowest layer, water ice and perhaps liquid
|water. The vivid colors of Jupiter's storms are probably caused by their
|chemical content. Although there isn't much carbon in
|Jupiter's atmosphere, carbon easily combines with hydrogen
|and small amounts of oxygen to form a variety of organic
|compounds. The orange and brown colors in Jupiter's clouds
|may be due to the presence of these organic compounds, or
|sulfur and phosphorus.
|
|Ron Baalke
|
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