What would happen if you tried to land on a gas giant?
14 comments
·June 22, 2025chasil
TuringNYC
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.
rybosome
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.
celsius1414
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...
ianburrell
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
Sounds like the LLMs may be hiding something up there, likely a monolith of sorts?
Bluestein
(This is were we find out an AI was running that weird room Bowman found himself in - the one with the lit floor ...)
Bluestein
> 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.-
ChocolateGod
> assume moving fast enough
then wouldn't the movement kill you?
"...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