[HN Gopher] What would happen if you tried to land on a gas giant?
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What would happen if you tried to land on a gas giant?
Author : Bluestein
Score : 38 points
Date : 2025-06-22 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.popsci.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.popsci.com)
| fmajid wrote:
| The same thing that would happen if you tried to land on a cloud.
| tptacek wrote:
| Per the article, no.
| rybosome wrote:
| I've wondered about this a lot.
|
| More so the grim question: if you were in a typical space suit
| sitting in a ship just outside Jupiter, then propelled yourself
| towards the planet - what would kill you first?
|
| Assume you are close enough that from the moment you are launched
| out, you are "in" the atmosphere at the outer edges. Also assume
| moving fast enough that the answer is not "dying from
| dehydration".
|
| I discussed a bit with GPT 4o and came to the conclusion that
| shear wind gusts of over 300mph in the upper atmosphere would
| probably do it. You'd hit that almost instantly, before high
| pressure, temperature or highly corrosive materials.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > discussed a bit with GPT 4o
|
| A fascinating, unexplored yet frequent use case, I am sure :)
|
| (Positing these "what-ifs")
|
| PS. On that note: All the recent space probes are yielding much
| interesting information on this.-
| vinni2 wrote:
| How can you be sure that what-if analysis by the LLMs are
| correct or plausible?
| Bluestein wrote:
| As with anything else coming out of LLM-land, you can't.-
| stavros wrote:
| How can you be sure with humans?
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > assume moving fast enough
|
| then wouldn't the movement kill you?
| ianburrell wrote:
| You would burn up just as you would on Earth. There is a steep
| increase in atmospheric density just as there is on Earth. The
| atmosphere doesn't extend much further than the sharp edge of
| visible atmosphere.
|
| The Galileo probe needed a heat shield to survive dropping into
| atmosphere. The 225g deceleration would have killed any human.
| It is presumed to be destroyed from the temperature and
| pressure.
|
| Although, you might die from the radiation first.
| BSOhealth wrote:
| Sounds like the LLMs may be hiding something up there, likely a
| monolith of sorts?
| Bluestein wrote:
| (This is were we find out _an AI_ was running that weird room
| Bowman found himself in - the one with the lit floor ...)
| celsius1414 wrote:
| Depending on your path to get there, the Jovian system's
| radiation might kill you before you hit the atmosphere.
|
| 'Jupiter's radiation belts - and how to survive them':
| https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Techn...
| chasil wrote:
| "...might make it to a gas giant's core. What it would find there
| in the alien murk is still unclear."
|
| One conjecture is metallic hydrogen.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_hydrogen
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I'm confused about this. The articles notes how hot the center
| of Jupiter would be "While our solar system's gas giants are
| far from the sun, the core of a gas giant is likely to be
| incredibly hot-Jupiter's is estimated at around 43,000 degrees
| Fahrenheit."
|
| Yet this article notes liquid Hydrogen towards the core and ice
| in the core. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_hydrogen
|
| The triple point diagram
| https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/hydrogen-d_1419.html
| suggests temperatures in this range would not yield anything
| solid or liquid.
| tux3 wrote:
| You also need to consider pressure, not just temperature. The
| same wikipedia page is talking about dozens to hundreds of
| gigapascals of pressure.
|
| If you look at your triple point graph, it stops several
| order of magnitude below.
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