Mysteries of Jupiter
Every 45 minutes a gigawatt pulse of x-rays courses through the solar system. “The pulses are coming from the north pole of Jupiter,” says Randy Gladstone, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and leader of the team that made the discovery using NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory.
“We weren’t surprised to find x-rays coming from Jupiter,” he says. What did surprise him is what Chandra revealed for the first time: the location of the beacon, which is surprisingly close the planet’s pole, and the regular way it pulses.
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