The NASA's CASSINI space probe took the picture above, showing fine detail of the Jovian cloud system.   Jupiter is mostly composed of invisible hydrogen and Helium.   The cloud features may be formed by small amounts of compounds like methane and ammonia and possibly phosphorous and sulphur. Despite a string of probes visiting Jupiter,  the exact reason for the colours is not known.   The features are caused by a mixture of the rapid spinning (just 10 hours) of the planet and convection currents welling up from the hot core.  Some swirls last for a few hours whilst others, like the 'Great Red Spot', have lasted for hundreds of years.   The dynamics and chemistry of Jupiter's atmosphere are currently being researched by space scientists using instruments like super computers.

We haven't got a super computer, but we do have two large glass bowls we usually use for chemistry experiments.   We ordered a couple of marbling kits and set about trying to discover how the patterns on Jupiter are formed by trying to recreate similar features in our bowls.

Our preliminary results are shown below.

We found that by stirring the water to give it radial velocity and then adding the inks, we could create broad bands that would persist near the perimeter but move away or break up in the centre.   The intricate detail at the pole in the Cassini image was often reflected in the structure seen at the centre of our marble prints.  We also found it possible to create small eddies in the main flow that were quite stable and spun as they revolved around the bowl.

Our next experiment was to put a heating coil at the bottom of the bowl to try to find out the effect of convection currents on the surface pattern.

Matthew experiments with a heating coil under the surface	Taking a print of the surface pattern

 

 

Jupiter images and information links