Is it possible to fly through Jupiter and when will they find a new planet: says astrophysicist Vladimir Surdin

We dream of distant space, but we don’t yet know very well the corner of space where we live. Astrophysicist Vladimir Surdin helped listeners of the Science Pulverizer podcast separate myths about the solar system from the truth.

Is it true that the Sun is a third generation star?

After supernova explosion stellar matter scatters in space. New stars may emerge from it - the luminaries of the next generation. And you can often hear that our Sun is a third generation star. We can say that this is truth intertwined with myth.

It’s simpler with human generations: it’s easy to calculate when the old will be replaced by the new. This is usually the age when people become parents, - that is, 20–30 years. This means that for every century four or five new generations appear.

With stars it’s more difficult. Depending on their mass, they can live from several million to thousands of billions of years. Therefore, no one will say how many generations of stars were already in the Universe before the Sun appeared.

You can make an approximate calculation of the lifetime of luminaries that are comparable in mass to ours. We know that the Universe has existed for approximately 14 billion years. The sun is about 5 billion. We divide 14 by 5 and say: The Sun may be a third generation star.

This is an approximate conclusion: in fact, supernova explosions that preceded the appearance our luminary, maybe more or less. But we know for sure that the Sun is not from the first stellar series. And that's why.

Astronomers study the chemical composition of the building material from which the Sun and planets are made. Meteorites help with this - the building blocks that remained after our star and the Solar system were formed.

It turns out that on the eve of the compression of the cloud from which the Sun and all the planets of our system were later born, a supernova exploded nearby. The ejection of matter was so strong that some of the chemical elements of that star ended up in our solar cloud after the explosion.

Scientists have found aluminum-26 in meteorites that fell to Earth - radioactive element. And it came to us precisely from the substance that was ejected after the supernova explosion. This element can be found not only in meteorites, but also in asteroids. Without it, small celestial bodies with a diameter of 50–100 kilometers should have cooled down long ago. But it turned out that they were warm inside, because aluminum-26 continued to disintegrate and heat the sky stones.

Does Mercury really go retrograde?

From the Sun we move on to the first planet of the system. We often hear about Mercury retrograde - at the suggestion of astrologers, it turned into a meme. They say that this small planet is to blame for many of our problems. Or rather, its retrograde is the illusion that Mercury is moving not in the direction we are accustomed to, but in the other direction. According to astrologers, this creates problems for people on Earth.

Yes, for observers on our planet, Mercury does sometimes change direction. This is not a myth. Is it true, astronomers use different terminology and call it reverse, or backward, movement. But this certainly does not affect earthly affairs.

It is very simple to explain the phenomenon of reverse movement. All of us, when driving a car or on a train, noticed how pillars or trees run backwards. Or how a car first overtakes a truck, and then it moves away from us. This does not happen because he is traveling in the opposite direction - his speed is simply much lower than ours.

The same thing happens for earthly observers and with visible planets.

Interestingly, Venus and Uranus are always retrograde for us. But this is not about movement around the Sun, but about rotation around its axis. That is, Venus and Uranus do not spin in the same direction as all the other planets, but in the opposite direction.

Does the sad fate of Venus await Earth?

Let's talk about Earth's closest neighbor in more detail. It is very similar to our planet - its size, mass, and distance to the Sun differ little. But Venus rotates around its axis about 220 times slower than the Earth, and even in the opposite direction. A Venusian day lasts almost two-thirds earth year. Scientists cannot yet say what phenomenon first played the role of a brake, and then forced Venus to spin back. But science is trying to solve this problem too.

Scientists believe that once on the neighboring planet oceans also splashed and the sky was blue. But today its atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide, and the surface is hidden from observers by a dense layer of clouds of sulfuric acid.

The Venusian atmosphere is about 100 times heavier than Earth's and is completely unbreathable. The planet's surface temperature reaches 460 °C. Tin and lead, if they are found there, will probably melt, and maybe gather into rivers or lakes.

But the planet was not always like this, and this is not a myth, but a working hypothesis. It can be checked by sending probes and equipment for echolocation to Venus. However, this is still difficult to do. The temperature, comparable to the heat of a blast furnace, does not allow free research.

But the question of whether our planet will repeat the fate of its neighbor is very important. The answer also depends on us, people.

Is it possible to colonize Mars

If the earth's climate begins to approach Venus's, you can try colonize Mars. This idea is already being discussed in the scientific community. But it is unlikely that people will be able to create a completely autonomous system on the Red Planet that will not depend on the supply of everything necessary from Earth.

Now we can think about reconnaissance flights to Mars. Perhaps later there will be scientific bases for engineers and researchers there. But they will depend entirely on transport flights from our planet. And delivering something to Mars today is unimaginably expensive. After all, even provision ISS, which does not leave the Earth's orbit, costs a lot of money.

And Martian logistics will probably cost us much more. So today it is too early to talk about the colonization of the Red Planet.

Is it true that you can fly through Jupiter as if through a cloud?

Behind Mars are the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. Many people believe that if a planet consists of gas, then it is possible to easily pass through it. fly by, for example, on a spaceship. And this is no more difficult than for an airliner to overcome a cloud accumulation.

But this is a myth. Gas giant Jupiter is a planet that is more than 300 times larger than Earth in mass and 10 times larger in size. If someone on a spaceship crashes into its dense atmosphere, they will instantly burn up there, like a meteor in the earth’s air envelope.

Strictly speaking, Jupiter and Saturn are not even gas planets, but liquid planets. Their outer and very thin shell is actually made of gas. But then, due to high pressure, it turns into liquid. Therefore, we can say that Jupiter is a giant ball of liquid hydrogen impregnated with helium. And trying to fly through it is like hitting your stomach on the water during an unfortunate fall. Only the impact force will be immeasurably greater.

There is another myth about Jupiter: it attracts asteroids to itself and does not allow them fall to earth. Therefore, the giant supposedly protects our planet from the impacts of celestial stones.

It is true that Jupiter intercepts some of the asteroids flying towards Earth. But its attraction changes the directions of other bodies. Without Jupiter, they would easily fly past the Earth, but a new trajectory leads them to a collision with our planet. So the balance is right. Jupiter does not reduce the number of impacts - it simply exchanges some objects for others.

Is there another planet in the solar system that has not yet been discovered?

In 2006, Pluto was excluded from the list of classical planets and assigned to a number of dwarf planets. That is, it is not the ninth planet of the solar system. Nevertheless, a holy place is never empty. It may very well be that there really is another planet in the solar system. This is evidenced by the calculations of two groups of mathematicians - American and Japanese.

The first, Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin, carried out the calculations more than 10 years ago. And they confirmed the presence of another planet in the solar system mathematically. According to their calculations, it is about five times more massive than the Earth and is 100 times farther from the Sun. Brown and Batygin themselves are trying to find this planet and see it through a telescope. But so far they can’t catch the invisible one.

Perhaps scientists would stop searching and forget about their idea. But recently Japanese astrophysicists made their own calculations, which also showed that there may be not eight, but nine planets in the solar system. But it is still unclear how earthlings will see the ninth.

New telescopes that are currently being built in Chile and the Hawaiian Islands will certainly help solve the puzzle.

Whether scientists will discover a new planet or be convinced that it does not exist is still unknown. But alone a mystery in the solar system will definitely become less.