News From the Field
Helium Rain on Jupiter Explains Lack of Neon in Atmosphere

March 22, 2010

When the Galileo probe descended through Jupiter's atmosphere in 1995, it found neon to be one-tenth as abundant as predicted. This unexpected finding has led two University of California, Berkeley, researchers to propose an explanation: at about 10,000 kilometers below the cloud tops, helium condenses into droplets and falls inward, dragging neon with it and depleting Jupiter's outer layers of neon as well as helium. Full Story

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University of California, Berkeley

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