– How do gas giants not have a surface? Where do asteroids and comets go when they get sucked in? What’s at the center of a gas giant?

Question

This has always baffled me. I can’t really understand how they could just not have a surface no matter how far down you go. Obviously gravity has to pull the gasses together into some more dense form eventually… right?

In: 775

Answer 1

Gas giants are mostly made up of gas and have no solid surface. Instead of a solid surface, they have a thick atmosphere made up of hydrogen and helium, which gets denser as you go deeper into the planet.

Asteroids and comets that get pulled into the gravity of a gas giant will eventually fall into the atmosphere and be absorbed by the planet. The pressure and temperature inside the planet’s atmosphere increases as you go deeper, and at some point, the materials in the asteroids and comets will become so hot and dense that they will be compressed into a solid or liquid form.

The cores of gas giants are thought to be made up of rock and metal, similar to the cores of terrestrial planets like Earth. However, the cores of gas giants are much larger and more massive than the cores of terrestrial planets, and they are surrounded by layers of gas and other materials. The exact composition of the cores of gas giants is not well understood, and researchers are still studying these planets to learn more about their structure and evolution.