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
There is solid, a rocky core, to all of the gas giants, as far as we can tell. You are just sort of thinking about this in the wrong way: a gas giant is gassy (like earth atmosphere) on top of an ocean (the gas turns into liquid from cold and pressure), on top of rock.
A gas giant is really pretty much like earth in a away, if earth were totally covered by a thick ocean. They have an atmosphere, a thick “hydro”sphere (liquid cover), and a rocky center. Metal core perhaps as well. Generally speaking, because it is cold, the atmosphere tends to be cloudy, so all we see is mr comet or whatever smashing into the clouds. We can’t see it hit the ocean of methane (or whatever liquid it is), but we can see how the impact down below really mucks up the atmosphere above.
Maybe they have islands sticking up above the oceans but probably not. The oceans of methane or ammonia or whatever are generally too thick. Too much of the gas-forming stuff compared to rocky planets like earth that don’t have much gas-forming stuff. However, just because they have more gas, it does not mean that there is no rock. Just gas and liquid are a bigger proportion of the total.
Latest Answers