Laser experiments suggest helium rain falls on Jupiter

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Sprinkles of helium rain may fall on Jupiter.


At pressures and temperatures present within the gas giant, the hydrogen and helium that make up the bulk of its atmosphere don’t mix, according to laboratory experiments reported in the May 27 Nature. That suggests that deep within Jupiter’s atmosphere, hydrogen and helium separate, with the helium forming droplets that are denser than the hydrogen, causing them to rain down (SN: 4/19/21).


Jupiter’s marbled exterior is pretty familiar territory, but it’s still not clear what happens far below the cloud tops. So researchers designed an experiment to compress hydrogen and helium, reaching pressures nearly 2 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure and temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius, akin to inner layers of gas giants.

Laser experiments suggest helium rain falls on Jupiter

Compressing a hydrogen and helium mixture with lasers shows that the two elements separate at pressures found within gas giant planets.

www.sciencenews.org