Monday 29 August 2016

Bacteria on monkey bars

Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria that can spread through the body at a high rate. The method by which it does so has recently been discovered by a team of Canadian scientists.


What is Lyme disease?
The red spot caused by a tick
When you get bitten by a tick that carries Lyme disease, you develop a big red spot around the place you’ve been bitten. Shortly after that, the disease cause all kinds of symptoms all over your body; headaches, stomach aches, muscles soreness and other undesirable things. Because the symptoms appear quite soon after you’ve been bitten by a tick, usually a couple of weeks, the disease spreads incredibly fast through your body. The disease can do that because the Lyme bacteria, that cause the disease, can travel through your bloodstream. But how those bacteria could actually do so, remained a mystery for quite a while. But now, Rhodaba Ebady and Tara Moriarty have found out, after closely studying the bacteria moves.

Which way to go?
The weird thing is, the bacteria doesn’t just float away in a blood vessel in the direction blood is flowing in that vessel. The bacteria can also be quite stubborn and actually climb up, against the direction of the blood flow in that blood vessel. Because of this, the Lyme bacteria can spread through your body twice as fast as when the bacteria would just float around. And this also explains how the bacteria, which is called B. burgorferi can affect your whole body so quickly.

The green and orange stripes are Lyme bacteria,
the colour us in which stage in
their monkey bar jumping they are.
Bacterial monkey bars…?
To study the odd nature of the spread of B. burgdorferi, researchers built an artificial blood vessel which matched the workings of a normal human blood vessel. A B. burgdorferi was placed into the fake vessel,  and then the scientists observed the interactions of the bacteria and the vessel. The way this bacteria works is by attaching itself onto the wall of the vessel. It forms bonds with the wall and undergoes a cycle of breaking and making bonds. By doing so, it acts somewhat like a child swinging on monkey bars. They hold on using two bonds for a period of time. When they let go of one bond, they slingshot themselves forwards and attach themselves to the wall with another bond. By doing this continuously, they can creep through the vessels. This technique is also used by certain human immune cells called leukocytes.

Further use of this technique
Thanks to this study, we are learning more and more about different bacteria. This could help us learn how to cure diseases caused by these bacteria and it could even be mimicked in robotics to move against the flow of blood vessels with little to no problems.

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Friday 26 August 2016

Sunlight and carbon dioxide turned into methane

With the problem of increasing carbon dioxide levels, many are trying to find ways to change this gas into something useful. Some scientists have recently engineered bacteria to do just that.


Rhodopseudomonas palustris
Make the bacteria do it!
Kathryn Fixen and her team have recently engineered a bacterium, Rhodopseudomonas palustris, to make methane from carbon dioxide. By tweaking the enzyme nitrogenase, which normally creates ammonia, scientists have managed to make it catalyze the reaction of carbon dioxide (CO2) to methane (CH4). They then managed to modify the R. palustris bacterium to make it mass produce the engineered nitrogenase. Since this bacteria can use sunlight as a source of energy, it is easier to create a large amount of this enzyme using natural sources. This makes it both eco-friendly and efficient.

Use of methane

Methane is the principal component of natural gas, which can be found in large bubbles in the soil all over our planet.  If you live in a cold country, you would use this to warm your house. It can also be used to make electricity and to power certain vehicles. Some people also cook on natural gas. This versatility of this gas makes it useful in many daily scenarios.

Not yet perfect
The other method which wo
uld be used to make methane would be through the use of methanogens. These microorganisms naturally produce methane and can be found in many different places including the human large intestine. The only problem with them is that they require different materials such as acetate to make methane and they can’t make it without the help of other microorganisms. This means that it requires multiple steps for the reaction to happen. With the new method though, the reaction happens in one step. As well as this, it can happen in a living organism, this means that it can happen at room temperature. Another advantage to this method is that it makes it easy to tweak since there is only one main step which needs to be changed. But, even with with all of its advantages, this engineered nitrogenase is still not as efficient at transforming compounds as the natural nitrogenase. “The normal enzyme makes about two hydrogens for every [molecule of] ammonia,” Co-author Caroline Harwood said. “The altered enzyme makes a thousand hydrogens for every molecule of methane.”

Ongoing research
The research is still going on as the scientists are attempting to find a way to increase the efficienc
y of the enzyme. Who knows, maybe some time in the future we will be reliant on these bacterium to create fuels for all of us to live a sustainable life.

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Wednesday 24 August 2016

Quantum bits times four

Quantum bits are the building blocks of Quantum computers because they represent two numbers at the same time. Scientists have now developed a quantum bit that represent four numbers simultaneously, instead of just two.

A simple picture of an atom
Fully controlled atom
Normal quantum bits basically consist of an electron (the really small particles that orbit atoms) trapped in certain kinds of material. This combination then starts to behave like an atom, but a very special one. We can control all the properties of this ‘artificial atom’. Normal atoms can have a few specific energy levels. These energy levels depend on the orbits of the electrons. The bigger the orbit, the higher the energy level. Since we can control all properties of ‘artificial atoms’, we can also control the energy level and keep it steady. With this advantage, we can focus on a really weird property of the atom; its spin.

Like a spinning top spinning both ways
You can imagine artificial atoms to be a bit like spinning-tops. They can either spin to the right or to the left. The artificial atoms can do the same. The quantum computer then calls a spin to the right zero and a spin to the left one for example. But if you don’t look at the atom, it can actually spin both ways at the same time, and thus the artificial atom can represent both a one and a zero. But as soon as you look at it, it’s suddenly either a one or a zero. This strange property enables quantum computers to run multiple calculations at once, while normal computers can only do one at a time. Really fast, that is, but still one at the time.

Graphene is weird
But now, scientists have discovered that we can really change the properties of an artificial atom by trapping it in graphene. Instead of two types of spin, it suddenly has four. The spinning top cannot only spin to the left and to the right, but also up and down. And you can now imagine it better as a ball. The quantum computer can call the two new spins two and three, and suddenly it has two whole new numbers to play with. This can make the quantum computer even faster, since it can do even more calculations in the sameamount of time.

The atoms are picky
But there is one problem though. For the artificial atoms to actually turn into balls instead of spinning-tops, and get four possible spins, they have to be trapped in a very smooth piece of graphene. If the graphene is a bit rough on the edges, the artificial atom will refuse to turn into a ball and just keep its two spins. And graphene is notoriously hard to make since it consists of a single layer of carbon atoms. So it’s incredibly thin and delicate. This makes it really unlikely that this new discovery will be used in some new invention any time soon, since further research has to be done to make these special artificial atoms more stable.


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Monday 22 August 2016

Fighting poverty with satellites

Governments in poor countries have to make important decisions to help their countries out of poverty. For these decisions, they need a lot of data, which is usually limited in those countries. Neal Jean and his team have found a solution.

No census causes old data
Surveys conducted in Africa in
the past few years

In poorer countries, it’s really hard to get detailed census data since roads and other infrastructure are generally not good so people are difficult to reach. On top of that, poor countries usually have lower literacy rates too. These two things, and other factors too, makes gathering detailed information about the people in that poor country especially hard. In Angola for example, 44 years elapsed since the last census before a recent one was conducted. In that time, the population grew from 5.6 million to 24.3 million and the country suffered a civil war. So governments have based their policies on horrible outdated data for an incredible long time. That’s mainly why this information is so important, especially there, since governments and policy-makers desperately need such information to make their countries better. Now, Neal Jean and his team have found a way to gather census-like data without actually conducting such a survey, but through the use of satellites.

Is it dark or really dark?
Scientists have already used night-time satellite images to determine which regions of the world are rich or poor in the past. This seems to be a really practical method; rich regions appear bright in the picture and poorer regions appear less bright. This happens because there’s less access to electricity there and also less artificial light. However, a disadvantage to this method is that it’s hard to see the difference between poor and very poor regions. They both appear equally dark. Scientists have also tried gathering information from smartphones, which are also sold more and more in poorer countries. Scientists can quite easily find out how wealthy somebody is based on his or her mobile phone use. The problem with this is that you can’t include the poorest of the poorest, which will cause wrong data. On top of that, most mobile phone data is owned by providers, and they aren’t that keen on giving their information away. Neal Jean and his team have found a method that doesn’t face either of those problems.

Combining day and night
They have designed software that can combine night-time images and day-time images. This method eliminates the problems you face when you use only night-time images. Because their software can recognize patterns that indicate wealth and poverty on the detailed day-time images. The software is then able to link the brightness of a place to its wealth or poverty levels. It can, for example, link large villas with swimming pools to bright light and crappy sheds to darkness. With the help of its knowledge, the software can then also tell the poor and the very poor regions apart, which is impossible when you only use night images. Another advantage they have is that Jean’s software only uses images and data that’s already freely available, unlike the mobile phone data. In other words, their software can be used as a replacement for surveys in countries where it’s hard or even impossible to conduct them. And it also shows how technological advances can also help fighting poverty. Or as economist Sendhil Mullainathan put it: “Why should the financial services industry, where mere dollars are at stake, be using more advanced technologies than the aid industry, where human life is at stake?”


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Saturday 20 August 2016

Bacteria don't only make you sick

The nanowire-making bacteria
Nanowires are the future of electronics. But they usually require nasty chemicals and difficult processes the create them. Scientists in Virginia have found a way to make bacteria form nanowires.

They’re everywhere

Nanowires are becoming more and more important parts in modern electronics. They can be found in transistors, which are important components of all devices that have chips in them; your computer, your phone, your television and even in your calculator. Nanowires also play an important role in some new innovations in solar panels. MIT scientists have designed solar panels that are both cheap and flexible, and they also use nanowires. These flexible solar panels could, for example, be used to cover the whole surface of electric cars so they could power themselves. However, the problem with nanowires is that they’re pretty hard to make.

Making nano-sculptures

There are basically two methods to make the small wires. The first one consists of obtaining large block of the material from which you want to make the wire (usually a metal such as copper), and cutting away all the excess. This technique can be likened a sculptor making a sculpture. The downside of this procedure is that nanowires are one billionth of a meter wide and mistakes are easily made. The other method is done by building up the wire from scratch.This is basically the complete opposite of the first one. This is similar to building with Lego. But when building a nanowire, the Lego bricks are fifty thousand times smaller than a human hair. So again, mistakes are easily made and this makes the creation of nanowires really difficult and expensive. But now, Yang Tan and his team have modified bacteria to make nanowires for them.

Make the bacteria do the work
The created nanowires (biowires)

They took some very common soil bacteria called Geobacter sulfurreducens. This bacteria can already make thin wires that are somewhat conductive. But with some advanced DNA modification, Yang Tan and his team implanted DNA from another bacteria into the geobacter. This new combination of DNA makes the bacteria form thinner and more conductive nanowires. This method is much easier than the older methods, since the only thing you need to do is keep the bacteria alive and wait. Another advantage of the nanowires made by bacteria is that they are really eco-friendly. Nanowires made with the older method usually have all kinds of toxic substances which can be very harmful for the environment. The bacteria-made nanowires don’t have these toxic substances in them, so it’s no problem if they end up in the environment. It might even be possible to just put your broken computer in the organic waste bin in the future.


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Tuesday 16 August 2016

The LHC stays worryingly silent

In 2012, the Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs-particle. Since then, the LHC hasn’t discovered any new particles, although it is working better than ever before. Scientists are worried.

Ehm…where are they?
At the LHC in Geneve, scientists make protons, one of the building blocks of atoms, collide which each other at very high speeds. And when you make things collide, they’ll break. Just like cars in a car crash. And when the cars break, you can see what’s inside of them. The LHC does pretty much the same thing. When the protons collide, we can see what’s inside of those too. With very advanced detectors, researchers can detect all kinds of fundamental particles that can teach us many new things about our universe. But the last major discovery was four years ago; the Higgs-particle. About a year after that, the LHC was closed for maintenance and an upgrade. Last year, the LHC was opened again, and now the particle accelerator works better than ever. It can accelerate the protons to higher speeds, which means bigger collisions. The researchers thought that would mean that they would discover more new particles. Except that they haven’t. And scientists are thinking there might not be any particles left to discover by the LHC anymore.

Protonic car crash times 400 trillion
After the upgrade, around 400 million-million protons have collided with each other in the LHC. And it hasn’t shown us any new particles yet. Scientists have a couple of explanations. The first one is of course quite simple; it’s an accident. We haven’t discovered a new particle, but the LHC can still find them and we just have to wait. “We could find something by the end of the year. You never know.” says Maria Spiropulu from CalTech. The second explanation is that the particles we’re looking for are actually way too heavy for the LHC to detect. Which means that the researchers working at the LHC will have to do very detailed measurements of the known particles, and from that they may be able to find clues those new, heavier particles. Whatever will be the case, the LHC will probably switch over to precision work, instead of the quite random proton-smashing that happens now, somewhere in 2018.

Don’t forget gravity
The Standard Model
The reason that scientists are convinced that there must be more particles, and that we don’t have just discovered all of them, is the Standard Model. In this model, we can fit all the particles, which can together explain all forces of nature. Except for gravity. So scientists are sure there must be one or more particles that are responsible for gravity out there. We just can’t find them. With even more improvements and upgrades to the LHC and its detectors, and with new precision measures of the well-known particles, we can find new clues to those hiding particles. Or maybe we just have to wait.

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Saturday 13 August 2016

Monitoring your nervous system with dust

A Fitbit is a handy gadget to keep track of your health. But what if you could have nanotechnology in your brain to monitor your health? This science-fiction is becoming real in a lab in California.

Tracking impulses

Jose Carmena and Michel Maharbiz recently developed nanotechnology that can be implanted into your nervous system where the tiny devices can track the activity of the specific nerve they are implanted in. If such a nano device would be implanted in one of your leg nerves, you would be able to track when and how long you walk. This would be possible since your leg nerves fire impulses, which the nanotechnology can detect when you walk. But don’t run to your doctor to get some nano devices implanted yet, because Carmena and Maharbiz have only tested their technology on anesthetized rats, and lots of testing must be done before we can use this technology for humans. But how does this new nanotechnology, which the developers call neural dust, actually work?

It’s too small!
Carmena and Maharbiz faced a couple of challenges when designing their neural dust, which they named this way because the tiny devices are implanted in the nerves or neurons and they are almost as small as little specks of dust. Firstly, the nanotechnology is so small that there isn’t any space for a battery or to store the information the tiny Fitbit gathered. The energy problem could be solved with wireless charging. This technology can already be found in some smartphones. The information problem could be solved by simply beaming all the information straight away. But this is impossible. The neural dust is so small that the communication systems we normally use for these kinds of things are much too imprecise. The signals would simply miss the tiny devices. They wouldn’t get charged and we wouldn’t get their information. We have other ways to transmit energy and information, but those are really harmful to our bodies since they can cause cancer. That being said, the scientists couldn’t use that either. But, fortunately, they found another way to communicate with and charge the nano devices; ultrasound. Doctors also use ultrasound to look at unborn babies, so it’s super safe and it’s also precise enough for the neural dust. But how are we going to use it?


A spec of neural dust attached to a rat's nerve
Helping the ill
Carmena and Maharbiz can see their neural dust being used for all kinds of things in the future, since they’re not only developing nano devices that can monitor our nerves, they also want to add a stimulating function to them. This can really help paraplegic people, people who have paralysed legs, for example. Earlier studies with similar devices have already shown that they can help those people control their bladder again. And similar devices have also helped people with sleep apnea. Scientists think they can also help people with diabetes and arthritis. With this new development, which has made the devices even smaller, we could also help people with diseases that require even more precise treatment. An example would be some bowel diseases. But, this will have to wait until all the testing is done, and the neural dust is safe for humans and not just for blacked out rats.

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Saturday 6 August 2016

Refuelling with carbon dioxide

What if we could turn CO2 into fuel? We would solve the global warming problem and the fuel problem. Scientists from the University of Toronto have done just that.

It’s too hot!
Carbon dioxide (CO2), water vapour and methane are the three main gases responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect which causes the climate to change. CO2 is responsible for between nine and twenty-six percent of the greenhouse effect. Therefore, if we can decrease the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, we would be able to reduce the negative consequences of the enhanced greenhouse effect and global warming. And the good news is: we can do that now! With the new technology, developed by Min Liu and Yuanjie Pang from the University of Toronto, we can change excess CO2 into the building blocks of fuels. But, it’s important that we only convert the excess CO2, and that we still leave a little in our atmosphere because CO2 is super important for us and all life on earth. Without CO2 and the greenhouse effect, the earth’s average temperature would be a chilling -18°C (-0.4°F) instead of a pleasant 15°C (59°F). But how does this new technology work?



But the CO2 has to want to change
Min Liu and Yuanjie Pang created nanoneedles, with tips ten thousand times thinner than hair. These needles conduct electricity, and this electricity attracts CO2. This is necessary because the concentration of CO2 in the air is still pretty low. Only four out of every 10000 air particles are CO2 molecules. Another problem we face when we try to alter CO2 is that it doesn’t want to change. It’s an inert molecule, which means that it takes a lot of effort to make it react with another substance and change. But, when you can bring a lot of CO2 and energy together, which the scientists in Toronto did with their newly developed device, this greenhouse gas will react more readily. Min Liu and Yuanjie Pang managed to change CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO), which is actually a poisonous gas, but also a building block of fuel.

Two flies with one hit
That’s another advantage of their invention, it can not only remove CO2 from our atmosphere, it can also create a substance which can be used to create all kinds of fuels and other useful chemicals. Pang describes their invention as “we're killing two birds with one stone” to Science Daily. Their invention can also provide us with a solution for the growing global energy problem and oil shortage. This could be done since we would not rely as heavily on oil or any fossil fuels if we can make fuels from CO2 on a large scale. That’s the main challenge for now, to make Liu and Pang’s invention truly useful we have to apply it on a really large scale. And that’s a long way of research away.


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Thursday 4 August 2016

Where did the mammoths go?

Most woolly mammoths went extinct twelve thousand years ago, but a few managed to survive on an island close to Siberia until 3700 years ago. But what killed those last survivors?

Saint Paul Island
It’s too hot!
The main reason that woolly mammoths went extinct thousands of years ago was climate change. Mammoths were completely adapted to cold climates, with their long, woolly coats and layer of fat. Because of this, when temperatures rose at the end of the last ice age, the mammoths practically sweat to death. Also, humans hunted mammoths for their fur, meat and teeth, which didn’t help the mammoths either. They retreated further and further away from Europe towards Asia, until there were only a couple of mammoths left in Siberia. This happened because Siberia was still really cold and not many people lived there. But, the mammoths couldn’t survive for long there either, and in the end only a few small groups were left on small islands, one of them was Saint Paul Island, close to Alaska. On that island, the last mammoth died 3750 years ago. Back then the Egyptians had already built their pyramids. But, even nowadays, it’s cold enough for mammoths to survive on Saint Paul Island, and there weren’t any people on the island until 1787. So what killed those last mammoths?

What else?
That’s exactly what Russell Graham and his team asked themselves. This question was a difficult one because the reasons that caused the mammoths on the mainland to go extinct didn’t apply to these ones. There were no people around to hunt them. And the plants didn’t suddenly disappear or change, which would have left the mammoths without food. The island also didn’t heat up dramatically. Then what caused the mammoths to die out? Graham thinks is has a lot to do with the amount of freshwater on the island. Because of local climate change, the sea level rose and the island got smaller. A side effect of this was that the amount of freshwater decreased dramatically. The mammoths couldn’t find enough water anymore and eventually died of thirst.

So small and yet so powerful

What Russell Graham and his team found particularly interesting about their discovery was that a relatively small climate change can mean the end for such large and seemingly powerful animals. They found this especially interesting since there weren’t any people around to give mammoths the last push into extinction, like there were on the mainland. But, this new discovery can also tell us some interesting things about our future.

Save our mammoths!
The mammoths on Saint Paul Island died because of a relatively small, local change in climate, which cause a relatively small rise of the sea level. Right now, we’re facing global climate change, which will cause global rise of the sea level. Although the mammoths on Saint Paul Island already were severely endangered, many species today are in the same situation. This means we should definitely do something to curb our CO2 emissions to save many species.

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Salty oxygen surprises scientists

Studying how the atmosphere was millions of years ago can tell us a lot about early life on earth. But that air is long gone. Nigel Blamey and his team have found a salty solution.

Air tight enclosed in salt
Blamey and his team have closely analysed ancient salt crystals. Salt crystals have tiny pockets of air in them and Blamey managed to extract these pockets out of the crystals in order to analyse them. They drilled up 815-million-year-old salt crystals from Australia’s soil and with a special device, they were able to crush the crystals and then capture the old gases that come out of the crystals. They then analysed those gases and made a really interesting discovery.

That’s weird…
Blamey and his team discovered that 815 million years ago, there was twice as much oxygen in the air as we used to think. Scientists used to think that there was only around 5 percent oxygen in the atmosphere that long ago. They also used to think that it was the reason for the lack of any complex life back then. The first complex life arose between 100 and 200 million years later, in a period called the Cambrian explosion. This explosion of complex life marked the beginning of the geological period called the Cambrian. During the Cambrian explosion all major ‘branches’ of the tree of life evolved. For a long time, scientists thought that complex life was made possible by the sudden increase of oxygen in the atmosphere. But now, Nigel Blamey and his team have discovered that the oxygen levels were already high enough for such an explosion millions of years earlier. So the Cambrian explosion must have had another reason.

No idea
Well, scientists haven’t found a reason yet. This discovery is so recent that scientists haven’t been able to adapt their theories yet. But Blamey and his team have found other interesting uses for their new machine that can extract gases from ancient salt crystals. For starters, they can analyse different salt crystals from other time periods. Through this, we can learn more about the history of our atmosphere. And with these future experiments, we may also be able to predict the future of our atmosphere. This would be very helpful to scientists doing research about climate change. But Nigel Blamey and his team also see another use for their new technique which is out of this world.

Maybe check out Mars too
Blamey and his team also see their technique being used on Mars. Since you can also find salt crystals that contain air pockets there, we could learn a lot more about Mars’s ancient atmosphere. This could be done by equipping future Mars rovers with the device Blamey and his team made. Analysing the planet’s salt crystals could prove that Mars’ atmosphere contained a lot of oxygen in the distant past, which could help us with finding out if life ever arose on Mars, or if it was possible. This shows that one invention can teach us about both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial life. 

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Monday 1 August 2016

A red window into Jupiter

Jupiter is way hotter than it should be. And the planet has the biggest storm in the solar system. James O’Donoghue and his team found a relation between these things.

Earth compared to the Red Spot
An old pimple
This big storm is called the Great Red Spot, because it’s a big red spot. This spot is in fact a giant cyclone in Jupiter’s atmosphere. But it’s not just a normal cyclone, it’s an anticyclone, which means that it turns in the opposite direction of all the other gases in Jupiter’s atmosphere. This creates a rather pretty pattern on Jupiter. It’s so huge because Jupiter is a gas planet, so it has no rocky surface like earth does. There is therefore less friction and cyclone is not slowed, thus keeping its size. This is also the reason why the Great Red Spot has been around for so long. The spot has been around for at least 186 years, but Robert Hooke, a 17th century scientist, also claimed to have seen the spot 351 years ago. But now, the Great Red Spot also appears to do something else, and it’s pretty warm.

Where does that heat come from?
Scientists discovered a really weird thing about Jupiter. The planet is a couple of hundreds of degrees Celsius hotter than the planet is supposed to be if it was heated only by the sun. Scientists proposed to explain this by saying that Jupiter was heated up by its polar light, but computer models showed that the heat created by polar light would just stay around the poles, and not spread to lower latitudes. But now scientists have a new theory. The Great Red Spot is one of the hottest objects in Jupiter’s atmosphere. James O’Donoghue and his team measured temperatures above the Great Red Spot that were 370 degrees Celsius higher than the surrounding atmosphere. And now they think the Red Spot is actually giving us a little sneak peek into Jupiter’s lower atmosphere, which we cannot usually see due to the high number of thunderstorms taking place. O’Donoghue and his team now think that these thunderstorms can actually heat up the whole planet, and especially the lower regions of the atmosphere, to the point that it is way hotter than it’s supposed to be. 

All mixed up
The reason that there’s so much heat above the Great Red Spot, and not so much above other parts of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, is that both layers of the atmosphere get mixed together by that giant storm, and with that their temperatures also mix. In the Red Spot, a lot of this heat ends up in the higher part of Jupiter’s atmosphere, and not just in the lower atmosphere. Meanwhile, in the rest of Jupiter’s atmosphere, the upper atmosphere is only heated from below, by the extremely hot lower atmosphere, and both layers don’t really get mixed. Because of this, the rest of Jupiter’s top layer isn’t as hot as the Red Spot, but still way hotter than the sun would make the planet. This shows how a huge spot can give us a huge insight into a huge planet. 

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