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Is there really weather on planets, and if there
is, is it like on earth or is it colder or hotter?
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Question Date: 1998-10-26 | | Answer 1:
Other planets do indeed have weather. In some
cases they are hotter. In some cases colder.
Venus has a very thick, carbon dioxide-rich
atmosphere, and it is so hot (about 1000 degreed
F) that lead stays molten just resting on the
surface!
Mars is very cold (less than the
freezing temp. of water). It has an atmosphere of
carbon dioxide and water vapor, but the atmosphere
is 100 times thinner than the Earth's. Thin
clouds on Mars are made of ice crystals, and the
surface is breezy with light winds.
Jupiter
has dramatic weather. Its red spot is a giant
storm, and winds on the surface are much stronger
than here on Earth. Check out the web page
at http://www-astronomy.mps.ohio-state.edu/~frogel/ast161/notes.part3.html. How
fast are the winds of Jupiter?
Hope this
helps!
| | Answer 2:
Weather is very different depending on the planet
you goto. Mars has a thin atmosphere but still
has very active weather with big dust storms
every year (a martian year is longer than an Earth
year). Mars is much colder than Earth because it
is farther from the sun and there is little
atmosphere to conserve heat. Venus is constantly
shrouded in a very thick and dense atmosphere
made of sulfuric acid clouds and other components
that make living there impossible and even well
protected probes don't last long. Venus is
extraordinarily hot as well because its atmosphere
absorbs solar radiation and traps it. The bigger
planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and
Neptune, are mostly made of atmosphere and we can
only guess at what is at the middle . NASA is
planning missions to try and learn more about
these huge atmosphere in which you could stack
several whole Earths and perhaps find out what is
at the bottom. As an example, the Great Red Spot
of Jupiter is really a giant storm, kind of like a
hurricane three times bigger than the Earth which
has lasted at least 300 years (when scientists
first saw it in a telescope). Storms in the
atmospheres of the outer planets are on a scale
that is difficult to conceptualize as the planets
are so much bigger, and the storms are the size of
planets like Earth and last thousands of our
years.
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