Jupiter, the giant of the Solar System, is known for its enormous storms that can last for centuries, such as the famous Great Red Spot. And the planet’s superstorms have been shown to fuel superlightning.
A study based on measurements from NASA’s Juno mission estimates that even the weakest lightning on Jupiter is about as powerful as Earth’s. But in many cases, the electrical discharges release 100 to 10,000 times more energy.
On Earth, an average lightning bolt releases one gigajoule of energy, enough to power about 200 households for an hour. And that means that the most powerful lightning on Jupiter erupts with an energy of 10,000 gigajoules, which corresponds to 2,400 tons of TNT, one-sixth of the energy released by the Hiroshima nuclear bomb.
And since several lightning bolts erupt every second in Jupiter’s storms, the total energy release reaches the level of a nuclear war.
Jupiter is made up mostly of hydrogen and other gases, but the mechanism that generates lightning is believed to be the same as on Earth: clouds of water vapor and ice crystals that accumulate static electricity due to friction.
The accumulation of charges creates high electrical voltages, which are released in electrical discharges. On Earth, these discharges often connect the ground to the clouds. On Jupiter, which has no solid surface, lightning moves from cloud to cloud.
The new estimate is based on measurements from the Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016 and is equipped with a radiometer, an instrument that records microwave emissions from lightning.
Lightning flashes have been recorded on the night side of Jupiter since the Voyager spacecraft in 1979. However, they are generally difficult to see, as they are often obscured by overlying cloud layers.
Juno can detect even these hidden lightning strikes, but it can’t pinpoint their location. The data comes from a study published in AGU Advances, “Radio Pulse Power Distribution of Lightning in Jupiter’s 2021–2022 Stealth Superstorms“.
The storms were several thousand kilometers across and produced an average of three lightning bolts per second, the researchers report.
Jupiter’s lightning may actually be even more powerful than previously thought, as it emits not only microwaves and visible light but also thermal, acoustic and chemical energy. Furthermore, because the wavelengths of the radiation are different than on Earth, the calculations suffer from a significant degree of uncertainty. This means that lightning on Jupiter could be up to a million times more powerful than on Earth.
