Jupiter Is Getting Slammed by Ammonia Slushees, Scientists Confirm

In 2020, a group of scientists came up with an explanation for strange inconsistencies in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. They suggested that ice-encrusted mushballs rain down during intense thunderstorms on the gas giant. At the time, however, the notion of ammonia-packed slushee hailstones seemed too weird to be true, so they spent the next several years trying to prove it wrong. But Jupiter’s mushballs could not be denied. New research confirmed the bizarre phenomenon not only exists—it could be taking place on all gaseous planets of the solar system. In the recent finding, reported in the journal Science Advances, planetary scientists at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) confirmed that hailstorms of mushballs, accompanied by fierce lightning, occur on Jupiter. The mushballs—slushy orbs of ammonia and water encased in a hard shell of water ice—deliver ammonia to deeper layers of Jupiter, unmixing its atmosphere. UC Berkeley graduate student Chris Moeckel and astron ... Read full article.