Ganymede

Water vapor on Ganymede Life

Water vapor on Ganymede

Jupiter's moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system and, at 5262 km in diameter, is even larger than the planet Mercury. But while the planet closest to the sun is dry and hot, Ganymede is the complete opposite. The moon harbors more water than all the Earth's oceans combined. However, because it orbits so far from the Sun, most of the water is frozen. All of it? No. At a depth of 160 kilometers, there is a liquid ocean beneath the icy crust, warmed by the gravitational pull of the gas giant Jupiter. But even on…
Ganymede awakens: whistling and chirping around Jupiter’s moon Space

Ganymede awakens: whistling and chirping around Jupiter’s moon

The Sun generates low-frequency radio waves in the Earth’s radiation belt. If you were to listen to them in a loudspeaker (which is actually what scientists were doing when these radio waves were discovered in the 1960s), they sound like the whistling and chirping of a flock of birds. These special waves were therefore given the name chorus waves. It was later discovered what these chorus waves produce: they are particularly well suited for transferring energy to electrons in the solar wind. Charged particles accelerated by them can then produce particularly good auroras when they enter the Earth’s atmosphere.…