Saturn: Helium Rain

16. 11. 2023
6th international conference of exopolitics, history and spirituality

With the help of one of the most powerful lasers in the world, physicists have been able to find further evidence for the existence of helium rains on Saturn. This was reported on the Science News website at a meeting of the American Geophysical Association in San Francisco on December 15 by Gilbert Collins of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Rain on Saturn is a phenomenon in which a mixture of liquid hydrogen and helium separates in the same way as the components in a water-oil emulsion separate. Helium migrates from the upper layers to the lower layers, and this manifests itself as rain on Saturn. The results of the scientists showed the temperature and pressure ranges at which rain occurs.

Theories from the mid-70s predicted the occurrence of helium rains on Saturn, but have not yet been experimentally investigated. To this end, scientists from the Laboratory of Laser Energy at the University of Rochester in New York mimicked the conditions inside Saturn. Physicists using an OMEGA laser forced a mixture of hydrogen and helium, placed between two diamonds, to separate liquid helium.

They managed to achieve this by compressing the mixture with a shock wave from diamonds, which were exposed to laser radiation. As a result, structures with certain densities and temperatures appeared in the mixture, the acquisition and description of which was a major success of scientists. According to them, it took 5 years of experiments to achieve this result and it took 300 laser shots.

The separation of hydrogen and helium (a phase transition between 3 and 30 Kelvin and 30 and 300 Gigapascals) can take less time than physicists originally thought. This would mean that it can be assumed that helium rains can occur not only on Saturn, but also on its higher-temperature neighbor, the gas giant Jupiter.

Some scientists believe that research by physicists will need to be reviewed. Sarah Stewart of the University of California, Davis, pointed out that helium rains on Saturn could be modeled by experiments on the Z-Machine. David Stevenson, who deals with the theory of helium rains, assumes that the Juno spacecraft (Jupiter Polar Orbiter), when it reaches the orbit of Jupiter - in 2016, will help clarify the rains on this gas giant.

Similar articles