[Applause]
so if you look up toward the skies in
the hour before dawn tomorrow you’ll
catch sight not far above the southeast
horizon of a bright spot of light
they’ll soon fade from view
as the Sun rises but if you were to look
again a month a week or even a day later
you might be surprised to find that the
spot of light has moved against the
background stars and that’s because this
particular point of light is what the
ancient Greeks called a planet ease or
wanderer it’s one of five that have
mystified watches of the sky since
antiquity the Greeks called this
particular one Zeus the Romans called it
Jupiter and for millennia the king of
the ancient Pantheon wandered the skies
not much more than a curiosity amongst
people who watched the sky then on the
7th of January 1610 a man in what is now
northern Italy pointed a new invention
towards this point of light and what he
discovered changed humanity’s view of
the universe forever the device was the
telescope the man was Galileo Galilei I
and the discovery was that Jupiter was a
complex planet
it’s orbited by its own system of moons
and that meant that earth is not the
center of the universe
now this discovery put Galileo on a
collision course with a Roman
establishment but it’s set in motion a
period of discovery that we see today
with robotic spacecraft being flung to
the farthest corners of the solar system
many of them visiting Jupiter now
Jupiter’s latest visitor is one that you
may be familiar with
it’s the NASA mission Juno which has
been orbiting the planet since July 2016
with dazzling results but before we get
to the ingenuity of the Juno mission
first
why Jupiter why are we interested in do
booter what’s so special about this
particular distant planet well if you’re
a scientist a poet or a philosopher
Jupiter brings out the superlatives so
in simple stats it’s the fifth planet
from the Sun an absolute monster
with a radius of over 11 times that of
the earth it’s the largest planet in the
solar system to put it in context if you
were to scrape together all of the mass
in all of the other planets moons comets
asteroids and other assorted lumps of
rock in the solar system you still
wouldn’t have half the mass of Jupiter
and as a planet it’s nothing like Earth
it’s essentially a raging ball of
hydrogen and helium with no solid
surface but there’s so do Peter you know
it’s done statistics alone it’s an
unforgiving planet but there’s something
deeper beyond size and beauty that’s
going on here that I’d like to explore
today you see the story of Jupiter is
the story of the formation of the solar
system and by implication us and this is
what gives Juno as missions special
significance by peering beneath the
clouds Juno is telling us unlocking the
secrets of our creation it’s sending
back a picture of what happened
four-and-a-half billion years ago when
we were nothing more than a collapsing
cloud of dust and gas you see of all the
planets in the solar system we know that
Jupiter must have formed first simply
because it was able to grab hold of most
of the available gas and did so before
the Sun turned on and blew all the gas
away we know that Jupiter once it formed
must have had a profound effect on the
formation of the other planets in the
solar system including of course our own
earth and the sources of our own
existence
you see we forget often that over half
of
body mass is water we’re all essentially
walking water bags and yet many of us
forget or don’t often query where did
that water come from well we’ve got
strong reason to believe that the
Earth’s water was delivered by objects
originating in the outer solar system
that were flung in our direction by
Jupiter’s enormous gravity and this is
why we need to understand the history of
Jupiter but understanding Jupiter has
implications for things going on in our
everyday lives around us simple things
like deciding whether we need to take an
umbrella out with us depend on whether
we can confidently write mathematical
models that faithfully capture the
behavior of a planetary atmosphere now
Earth’s atmosphere is disrupted by land
mass making it notoriously hard to model
and I think this fact is will be
familiar to anybody who’s been soaked on
an otherwise pleasant walk in the Lake
District but Jupiter has no solid
surface so it’s the perfect laboratory
for testing our atmospheric models if we
can make them work on Jupiter then we
know our models and our understanding of
planetary atmospheres is correct this is
what Jupiter holds for scientists and
that’s why all eyes are on this little
fella now we knew that Jupiter wouldn’t
give off its secrets lightly simply
getting a spacecraft to Jupiter is an
exquisite engineering challenge and it
took NASA six years to develop the Juno
mission but Juno was launched on a
steamy Florida day in August 2011 and it
was put into a giant gravitational
slingshot toward Jupiter that took five
years and crossed 1.7 billion miles just
think about that for a second that’s the
equivalent to over four hundred thousand
times around the world
an average of 39,000 miles an hour and
as Jupiter’s strong gravity pulled
in Juneau became the one of the fastest
human-made objects ever traveling over a
hundred and fifty thousand miles an hour
and at that point was the most
nail-biting moment for the mission
because then Juneau had to slam on the
brakes how to fire its rocket engines in
Reverse to slow the craft down and enter
into orbit around Jupiter I remember
sitting in a room with all the other
scientists waiting for the signal to
arrive we’re all on a knife-edge we
didn’t know what was going to happen and
when the signal came there was sheer
joyous relief we had a mission this
tough little probe had made it against
some pretty tough conditions we didn’t
know what Juno was going to be flying
into we had a good idea but no actual
data as to what was going to happen an
unrelenting magnetic field lethal
radiation levels violent projectiles
that could wipe out the spacecraft at
any moment so when the signal came we
were utterly joyful so the mission was a
success and now June nASA has been our
Juno has been orbiting successfully
successfully four four nine times and
eight is bringing back a picture of
Jupiter’s composition that is really
revolutionizing our understanding of
Jupiter by measuring the levels of water
and ammonia in Jupiter’s atmosphere it’s
telling us where Jupiter formed in the
solar system little Wiggles in the
spacecraft’s motion tell us about the
interior structure of Jupiter these
scientists have been arguing for decades
about whether Jupiter has a solid core
in the center and and that’s because we
can make plausible mathematical models
about what’s there but without any
actual data to tell us whether there’s a
core there or not
Juno
has been revealing some clues but also
puzzles you see it seems that Jupiter’s
core is there but it’s bigger than we
expected it’s fuzzy and possibly
partially dissolved into the surrounding
planet you see what’s mystified me so
far about the Juno mission has been seen
the solar system’s most powerful
magnetic field up close and in a new
light
so Jupiter’s magnetic field is huge if
you could stand in your own garden and
look up and see Jupiter’s magnetic field
it would appear as large as the Sun in
the sky its enormity drives a rural
displays that can flare up to over a
thousand times brighter than the Earth’s
own Aurora’s now I’ve studied Jupiter’s
Aurora’s from afar for over 15 years
using the Hubble Space Telescope and on
paper but this is the first time we’ve
sent a spacecraft directly over the
auroral poles
it’s the spacecraft equivalent of
kicking the tires to see if our ideas
are right so you see we think that
Jupiter’s auroral oval is caused by
sulphur dioxide which is thrown out by
volcanic by volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon
Io which is the most volcanic body in
the solar system
Jupiter’s rapidly rotating magnetic
field acts like a propeller flinging
this material away from the planet and
in doing so generating hundreds of
thousands of volts across the magnetic
field the auroral glow is caused when
this voltage slams charged particles
into the atmosphere and make it glow at
least that’s the theory Juno has been
providing an opportunity to test this
and it’s been showing us Jupiter’s
Aurora’s in a way that we’ve never seen
before this on the left is a picture of
Jupiter’s Aurora’s the team applauded
when they saw this picture it reveals to
us the beauty of Jupiter’s Aurora’s in a
way that we’ve never seen before the
stripes patches and arcs reveal a
complex system that we’re only beginning
to understand I’m just pretty sure
there’ll be more surprises like this is
the Juno mission could
but already we’ve seen some fantastic
images Juneau has been showing us what’s
going on in the atmosphere near the
poles that look completely different to
the planet that we’re used to seeing
Juno has shown that the the iconic
stripes that we remember from science
classes are just the tips of structures
which extend deep down 250 miles into
the Jovian abyss as far as Juno can see
enormous fountains of ammonia have been
have been seen deep in the equator in
atmosphere near the equator huge
hurricanes the size of the earth have
been seen jostling around the poles and
of course Juno has shown us the Great
Red Spot it sent back pictures which
reveal the chaotic power of this iconic
storm I’m pretty sure that Juno will
continue to surprise us as the mission
progresses but nothing lasts forever
radiation will eventually triumph
Juno’s electronic instruments will
succumb to the violence the radiation of
Jupiter’s domain you see
Juno is a tough little probe it’s there
thanks to some amazing engineering it’s
actually the first solar-powered
spacecraft to be sent to the outer
planets 330 foot long solar arrays
together with 18,000 photovoltaic cells
together provide only 500 watts of power
that’s about a quarter of the power that
your petal uses to boil a cup of tea but
it’s enough to provide all of the
instruments on Juno with warmth power
warmth and power
another challenge at Jupiter is the
radiation it’s one of the most lethal
places in the solar system
fortunately Juno is built like a tank
it’s it’s delicate electronics are
sheathed inside thick titanium and and
its orbit is such that it dives in
quickly gets the treasure trove of data
and gets out of there and as I say it’s
already done
nine times but that radiation will
eventually win now due to something
called planetary protection we don’t
want to lose control of the spacecraft
because especially near Jupiter’s
remarkable moons Ganymede and Europa see
these moons are special because they
could possibly hold an ocean beneath
their surfaces and where there’s liquid
water nutrients and warmth does the
potential for life
now NASA won’t want to contaminate a
possible biosphere and so
Juno will be safely deorbited into the
planet it will be plunged down into the
atmosphere where it’ll burn up and it
will become part of the planet that it’s
helped us to understand this may occur
next year it may occur the year after we
don’t know it depends on the health of
the spacecraft but what we do know is
that while Juno’s mission will end that
day it’s legacy won’t it’s data will
continue to help transform our
understanding of Jupiter
just like Galileo’s telescope
transformed his understanding of Jupiter
now for Galileo the state of the art of
exploration was an expedition to the new
world which is just the starting point
for Juno is 1.7 billion mile journey how
far we’ve come he would be utterly
astounded by our achievements and our
discoveries but the curiosity that drove
him to point his telescope at a point of
light in the sky is the same instinct
that compels us in this mind bogglingly
technological age to send spacecraft far
into space to gaze with giant telescopes
at the universe beyond this compulsion
to understand our surroundings and our
relationship with them is older than
history itself each new discovery of the
sheer scale of space and time is at once
both humble
and yet elevating for Humanity every
time we dare to venture into the unknown
we discover truths way beyond our
imagination it raises new questions and
it inspires new generations of
scientists
so after Juno we will go back to Jupiter
we’ll go back to Saturn I think we’ll go
to Uranus and Neptune and probably even
beyond because we’re explorers thank you
[Applause]
so if you look up toward the skies in
the hour before dawn tomorrow you’ll
catch sight not far above the southeast
horizon of a bright spot of light
they’ll soon fade from view
as the Sun rises but if you were to look
again a month a week or even a day later
you might be surprised to find that the
spot of light has moved against the
background stars and that’s because this
particular point of light is what the
ancient Greeks called a planet ease or
wanderer it’s one of five that have
mystified watches of the sky since
antiquity the Greeks called this
particular one Zeus the Romans called it
Jupiter and for millennia the king of
the ancient Pantheon wandered the skies
not much more than a curiosity amongst
people who watched the sky then on the
7th of January 1610 a man in what is now
northern Italy pointed a new invention
towards this point of light and what he
discovered changed humanity’s view of
the universe forever the device was the
telescope the man was Galileo Galilei I
and the discovery was that Jupiter was a
complex planet
it’s orbited by its own system of moons
and that meant that earth is not the
center of the universe
now this discovery put Galileo on a
collision course with a Roman
establishment but it’s set in motion a
period of discovery that we see today
with robotic spacecraft being flung to
the farthest corners of the solar system
many of them visiting Jupiter now
Jupiter’s latest visitor is one that you
may be familiar with
it’s the NASA mission Juno which has
been orbiting the planet since July 2016
with dazzling results but before we get
to the ingenuity of the Juno mission
first
why Jupiter why are we interested in do
booter what’s so special about this
particular distant planet well if you’re
a scientist a poet or a philosopher
Jupiter brings out the superlatives so
in simple stats it’s the fifth planet
from the Sun an absolute monster
with a radius of over 11 times that of
the earth it’s the largest planet in the
solar system to put it in context if you
were to scrape together all of the mass
in all of the other planets moons comets
asteroids and other assorted lumps of
rock in the solar system you still
wouldn’t have half the mass of Jupiter
and as a planet it’s nothing like Earth
it’s essentially a raging ball of
hydrogen and helium with no solid
surface but there’s so do Peter you know
it’s done statistics alone it’s an
unforgiving planet but there’s something
deeper beyond size and beauty that’s
going on here that I’d like to explore
today you see the story of Jupiter is
the story of the formation of the solar
system and by implication us and this is
what gives Juno as missions special
significance by peering beneath the
clouds Juno is telling us unlocking the
secrets of our creation it’s sending
back a picture of what happened
four-and-a-half billion years ago when
we were nothing more than a collapsing
cloud of dust and gas you see of all the
planets in the solar system we know that
Jupiter must have formed first simply
because it was able to grab hold of most
of the available gas and did so before
the Sun turned on and blew all the gas
away we know that Jupiter once it formed
must have had a profound effect on the
formation of the other planets in the
solar system including of course our own
earth and the sources of our own
existence
you see we forget often that over half
of
body mass is water we’re all essentially
walking water bags and yet many of us
forget or don’t often query where did
that water come from well we’ve got
strong reason to believe that the
Earth’s water was delivered by objects
originating in the outer solar system
that were flung in our direction by
Jupiter’s enormous gravity and this is
why we need to understand the history of
Jupiter but understanding Jupiter has
implications for things going on in our
everyday lives around us simple things
like deciding whether we need to take an
umbrella out with us depend on whether
we can confidently write mathematical
models that faithfully capture the
behavior of a planetary atmosphere now
Earth’s atmosphere is disrupted by land
mass making it notoriously hard to model
and I think this fact is will be
familiar to anybody who’s been soaked on
an otherwise pleasant walk in the Lake
District but Jupiter has no solid
surface so it’s the perfect laboratory
for testing our atmospheric models if we
can make them work on Jupiter then we
know our models and our understanding of
planetary atmospheres is correct this is
what Jupiter holds for scientists and
that’s why all eyes are on this little
fella now we knew that Jupiter wouldn’t
give off its secrets lightly simply
getting a spacecraft to Jupiter is an
exquisite engineering challenge and it
took NASA six years to develop the Juno
mission but Juno was launched on a
steamy Florida day in August 2011 and it
was put into a giant gravitational
slingshot toward Jupiter that took five
years and crossed 1.7 billion miles just
think about that for a second that’s the
equivalent to over four hundred thousand
times around the world
an average of 39,000 miles an hour and
as Jupiter’s strong gravity pulled
in Juneau became the one of the fastest
human-made objects ever traveling over a
hundred and fifty thousand miles an hour
and at that point was the most
nail-biting moment for the mission
because then Juneau had to slam on the
brakes how to fire its rocket engines in
Reverse to slow the craft down and enter
into orbit around Jupiter I remember
sitting in a room with all the other
scientists waiting for the signal to
arrive we’re all on a knife-edge we
didn’t know what was going to happen and
when the signal came there was sheer
joyous relief we had a mission this
tough little probe had made it against
some pretty tough conditions we didn’t
know what Juno was going to be flying
into we had a good idea but no actual
data as to what was going to happen an
unrelenting magnetic field lethal
radiation levels violent projectiles
that could wipe out the spacecraft at
any moment so when the signal came we
were utterly joyful so the mission was a
success and now June nASA has been our
Juno has been orbiting successfully
successfully four four nine times and
eight is bringing back a picture of
Jupiter’s composition that is really
revolutionizing our understanding of
Jupiter by measuring the levels of water
and ammonia in Jupiter’s atmosphere it’s
telling us where Jupiter formed in the
solar system little Wiggles in the
spacecraft’s motion tell us about the
interior structure of Jupiter these
scientists have been arguing for decades
about whether Jupiter has a solid core
in the center and and that’s because we
can make plausible mathematical models
about what’s there but without any
actual data to tell us whether there’s a
core there or not
Juno
has been revealing some clues but also
puzzles you see it seems that Jupiter’s
core is there but it’s bigger than we
expected it’s fuzzy and possibly
partially dissolved into the surrounding
planet you see what’s mystified me so
far about the Juno mission has been seen
the solar system’s most powerful
magnetic field up close and in a new
light
so Jupiter’s magnetic field is huge if
you could stand in your own garden and
look up and see Jupiter’s magnetic field
it would appear as large as the Sun in
the sky its enormity drives a rural
displays that can flare up to over a
thousand times brighter than the Earth’s
own Aurora’s now I’ve studied Jupiter’s
Aurora’s from afar for over 15 years
using the Hubble Space Telescope and on
paper but this is the first time we’ve
sent a spacecraft directly over the
auroral poles
it’s the spacecraft equivalent of
kicking the tires to see if our ideas
are right so you see we think that
Jupiter’s auroral oval is caused by
sulphur dioxide which is thrown out by
volcanic by volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon
Io which is the most volcanic body in
the solar system
Jupiter’s rapidly rotating magnetic
field acts like a propeller flinging
this material away from the planet and
in doing so generating hundreds of
thousands of volts across the magnetic
field the auroral glow is caused when
this voltage slams charged particles
into the atmosphere and make it glow at
least that’s the theory Juno has been
providing an opportunity to test this
and it’s been showing us Jupiter’s
Aurora’s in a way that we’ve never seen
before this on the left is a picture of
Jupiter’s Aurora’s the team applauded
when they saw this picture it reveals to
us the beauty of Jupiter’s Aurora’s in a
way that we’ve never seen before the
stripes patches and arcs reveal a
complex system that we’re only beginning
to understand I’m just pretty sure
there’ll be more surprises like this is
the Juno mission could
but already we’ve seen some fantastic
images Juneau has been showing us what’s
going on in the atmosphere near the
poles that look completely different to
the planet that we’re used to seeing
Juno has shown that the the iconic
stripes that we remember from science
classes are just the tips of structures
which extend deep down 250 miles into
the Jovian abyss as far as Juno can see
enormous fountains of ammonia have been
have been seen deep in the equator in
atmosphere near the equator huge
hurricanes the size of the earth have
been seen jostling around the poles and
of course Juno has shown us the Great
Red Spot it sent back pictures which
reveal the chaotic power of this iconic
storm I’m pretty sure that Juno will
continue to surprise us as the mission
progresses but nothing lasts forever
radiation will eventually triumph
Juno’s electronic instruments will
succumb to the violence the radiation of
Jupiter’s domain you see
Juno is a tough little probe it’s there
thanks to some amazing engineering it’s
actually the first solar-powered
spacecraft to be sent to the outer
planets 330 foot long solar arrays
together with 18,000 photovoltaic cells
together provide only 500 watts of power
that’s about a quarter of the power that
your petal uses to boil a cup of tea but
it’s enough to provide all of the
instruments on Juno with warmth power
warmth and power
another challenge at Jupiter is the
radiation it’s one of the most lethal
places in the solar system
fortunately Juno is built like a tank
it’s it’s delicate electronics are
sheathed inside thick titanium and and
its orbit is such that it dives in
quickly gets the treasure trove of data
and gets out of there and as I say it’s
already done
nine times but that radiation will
eventually win now due to something
called planetary protection we don’t
want to lose control of the spacecraft
because especially near Jupiter’s
remarkable moons Ganymede and Europa see
these moons are special because they
could possibly hold an ocean beneath
their surfaces and where there’s liquid
water nutrients and warmth does the
potential for life
now NASA won’t want to contaminate a
possible biosphere and so
Juno will be safely deorbited into the
planet it will be plunged down into the
atmosphere where it’ll burn up and it
will become part of the planet that it’s
helped us to understand this may occur
next year it may occur the year after we
don’t know it depends on the health of
the spacecraft but what we do know is
that while Juno’s mission will end that
day it’s legacy won’t it’s data will
continue to help transform our
understanding of Jupiter
just like Galileo’s telescope
transformed his understanding of Jupiter
now for Galileo the state of the art of
exploration was an expedition to the new
world which is just the starting point
for Juno is 1.7 billion mile journey how
far we’ve come he would be utterly
astounded by our achievements and our
discoveries but the curiosity that drove
him to point his telescope at a point of
light in the sky is the same instinct
that compels us in this mind bogglingly
technological age to send spacecraft far
into space to gaze with giant telescopes
at the universe beyond this compulsion
to understand our surroundings and our
relationship with them is older than
history itself each new discovery of the
sheer scale of space and time is at once
both humble
and yet elevating for Humanity every
time we dare to venture into the unknown
we discover truths way beyond our
imagination it raises new questions and
it inspires new generations of
scientists
so after Juno we will go back to Jupiter
we’ll go back to Saturn I think we’ll go
to Uranus and Neptune and probably even
beyond because we’re explorers thank you
[Applause]
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