Jupiter's Great Red Spot is 100 times deeper than Earth's oceans!

How deep are your roots? Impossible: NASA's Juno spacecraft has recently found that Jupiter's famous atmospheric storm and signature feature -- the Great Red Spot -- has roots that penetrate about 300 km! The finding The latest findings by the Juno mission managed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory were revealed at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans held this Monday "Juno found that the Great Red Spot's roots go 50 to 100 times deeper than Earth's oceans and are warmer at the base than they are at the top," said Andy Ingersoll, Juno co-investigator, according to a NASA release "The warmth of the Spot's base explains the ferocious winds we see at the top of the atmosphere", he added How Deep is Your Red? @NASAJuno investigates the depth of #Jupiters Great Red Spot https://t.co/dcPGOuwNSo pic.twitter.com/QhQwlLjkaT- NASA JPL December 11, 2017 Instruments responsible for the finding The science instruments that made this in-depth revelation possible was Juno's Microwave Radiometer "Juno's Microwave Radiometer has the unique capability to peer deep below Jupiter's clouds," said Michael Janssen, Juno co-investigator "It is proving to be an excellent instrument to help us get to the bottom of what makes the Great Red Spot so great", he added-- according to the NASA release Another revelation A new radiation zone -- that includes high-energy and heavy hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur ions moving at almost light speed -- was also detected by Juno The location of this zone is just above the gas giant's atmosphere, within the inner edges of the planet's "relativistic electron radiation belt, a region dominated by electrons near the equator"-- reported NASA The new zone was identified by the Jupiter Energetic Particle Detector Instrument investigation during Juno's high-altitude encounters with the electron belt, in regions never explored by prior spacecraft The particles are believed to be derived from energetic neutral atoms created in the gas around the Jupiter moons Io and Europa The neutral atoms then become ions as their electrons are stripped away by interaction with the upper atmosphere of Jupiter The origin and exact species of these particles is not yet understood Juno's Stellar Reference Unit star camera detects the signatures of this population as extremely high noise signatures in images collected by the mission's radiation monitoring investigation "The closer you get to Jupiter, the weirder it gets", retorted Heidi Becker, Juno's radiation monitoring investigation lead at JPL, according to the NASA release "We knew the radiation would probably surprise us, but we didn't think we'd find a new radiation zone that close to the planet. We only found it because Juno's unique orbit around Jupiter allows it to get really close to the cloud tops during science collection flybys, and we literally flew through it", she allegedly said Read: Juno completes one year in Jupiter orbit: Here's what the NASA spacecraft found so far Juno's achievements To date, Juno has completed eight science passes over Jupiter Juno's 9th pass around the giant planet will be on December 16, 2017 The future of the Red Spot The future of the storm is still very much up for debate While the storm has been monitored since 1830, it has possibly existed for more than 350 years Today, measurements indicate that the Spot has diminished in width by 1/3rd and in height by 1/8th from being twice of Earth's diameter in 1979.