# Standing On Jupiter.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 25, 2012, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321 "2012-07-25T06:39:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/1 "2012-07-25T06:39:45Z")
This question goes back to when I was a child. One time, I mused to myself as a child, why is there such a big to do about possible life on Mars? Why no, say, Jupiter too? (They sent a probe to Mars when I was still a kid. But people still wondered about life, maybe microbal, on Mars.) Then as time went by, I found out more and more about Jupiter. Still not enough, though, to answer what happens if you stood on Jupiter.
My question is simply this: What would happen if you stood on the surface of Jupiter? (You would have to be wearing a space suit first, I assume.) But what would happen? Would you sink? Would you be buoyant and float? Would the surface be solid? And if you sank, would you go all the way to the center, or stop along the way?
Thank you in advance to all who reply:)
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### Author:  [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/2 "2012-07-25T06:54:13Z")
Dude, Jupiter’s a gas giant. You can’t stand on it.
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### Author:  [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/3 "2012-07-25T06:55:41Z")
> [@friedo](#):
>
> Dude, Jupiter’s a gas giant. You can’t stand on it.
Which is why one of my questions was, Would you sink? And how far would you sink, etc.🙂
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### Author:  [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/4 "2012-07-25T06:57:28Z")
Well, the mass of Jupiter is about roughly 380 times that of Earth, so I would guess you’d be crushed under the weight of your own hair.
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### Author:  [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/5 "2012-07-25T06:58:47Z")
Err, that’s 318 times the mass of Earth, not 380.
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### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/6 "2012-07-25T07:16:10Z")
I think, but I’m not a planet-studier-guy, that at some point the gas would compress into a liquid. But you would be crushed before you could stand, float, sink or swim in it.
The gelatinous blob that remains of you would sink until the material below it was denser. But you wouldn’t remain a gelatinous blob for long. First, you are not made of uniform material, some blobettes will sink deeper than others. Second, Jupiter’s atmosphere is extremely turbulent, so you would be scattered horizontally as well. You might end up something like a kite string, but not nearly as substantial. Or maybe something like a 3-dimensional Jackson Pollack painting.
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### Author:  [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/7 "2012-07-25T07:20:55Z")
> [@friedo](#):
>
> Well, the mass of Jupiter is about roughly 380 times that of Earth, so I would guess you’d be crushed under the weight of your own hair.
If you’re suddenly teleported into the edge of Jupiters atmosphere and released (in a space suit armored to withstand pressure) you’d be in free fall so you wouldn’t be crushed by gravity.
You’ll fall until your spacesuit burns up or is collapsed by pressure, it reaches 9500 k pretty quickly:
> **[What are Temperatures Like on Jupiter?](https://www.universetoday.com/articles/temperature-of-jupiter)**
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### Author:  [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/8 "2012-07-25T07:38:56Z")
> [@friedo](#):
>
> Well, the mass of Jupiter is about roughly 380 times that of Earth, so I would guess you’d be crushed under the weight of your own hair.
But it’s more than 10 times the diameter of earth, so gravity on the surface would only be 3 times.
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### Author:  [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/9 "2012-07-25T07:53:40Z")
> [@AaronX](#):
>
> But it’s more than 10 times the diameter of earth, so gravity on the surface would only be 3 times.
the “surface” of the exotic temperature and pressure core (we have no frigging idea what it is) would be 100s of thousands of G’s if you could somehow get there.
if you’re in the atmosphere you’re either in orbit or free falling. Either way you’re in zero G.
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### Author:  [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/10 "2012-07-25T08:19:06Z")
I’m thinking the density of the planet would increase as you went deeper, and eventually you’d float or crash, depending if it solidified first or reached your density first. Some people think the density of our oceans increases enough for scrap to float before reaching the bottom too.
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### Author:  [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/11 "2012-07-25T10:16:02Z")
> [@AaronX](#):
>
> I’m thinking the density of the planet would increase as you went deeper, and eventually you’d float or crash, depending if it solidified first or reached your density first.
My guess is that given the temperature rise, whatever is left of you would be gaseous long before it reached those kinds of densities, and so you’d be dispersed by the winds and stop falling.
Any planetologists here to give a definate answer?
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### Author:  [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/12 "2012-07-25T10:16:11Z")
I must admit I’m a bit hazy about Jupiter’s structure, too. Is the “surface” of the planet that we see basically just the outer tenuous reaches of its atmosphere? And then does it basically just get steadily denser down through the atmosphere until you reach the soothing menthol liquid centre (and the enormous diamond, _pace_ Arthur C Clarke 🙂 )?
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### Author:  [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/13 "2012-07-25T10:41:39Z")
By the above logic, couldn’t you just as well say that on Earth anyone falling off the side of a boat should inevitably be crushed to death by hydrostatic pressure?
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### Author:  [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/14 "2012-07-25T11:29:14Z")
Assuming you were in free fall, would there be a point in time, before reaching the liquid core where tidal forces might overcome whatever protective shell you were in Ignoring the 9500k heat of re-entry.
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### Author:  [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/15 "2012-07-25T11:45:57Z")
From wiki:
> [@](#):
>
> The core region is surrounded by dense metallic hydrogen, which extends outward to about 78 percent of the radius of the planet.[31] Rain-like droplets of helium and neon precipitate downward through this layer, depleting the abundance of these elements in the upper atmosphere.[21][37]
>
> Above the layer of metallic hydrogen lies a transparent interior atmosphere of hydrogen. At this depth, the temperature is above the critical temperature, which for hydrogen is only 33 K[38] (see hydrogen). In this state, there are no distinct liquid and gas phases—hydrogen is said to be in a supercritical fluid state. It is convenient to treat hydrogen as gas in the upper layer extending downward from the cloud layer to a depth of about 1,000 km,[31] and as liquid in deeper layers. Physically, there is no clear boundary—gas smoothly becomes hotter and denser as one descends.[39][40]
>
> The temperature and pressure inside Jupiter increase steadily toward the core. At the phase transition region where hydrogen—heated beyond its critical point—becomes metallic, it is believed the temperature is 10,000 K and the pressure is 200 GPa. The temperature at the core boundary is estimated to be 36,000 K and the interior pressure is roughly 3,000–4,500 GPa.[31]
> **[Jupiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter)**
>
> Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined and slightly less than one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Its diameter is 11 times that of Earth and a tenth that of the Sun. Jupiter orbits the Sun at a distance of 5.20 AU (778.5 Gm), with an orbital period of 11.86 years. It is the third-brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky, after the Moon a...
My scientific conclusion is that things would end poorly.
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### Author:  [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/16 "2012-07-25T11:49:16Z")
Sounds like a good question for xkcd’s new feature.
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### Author:  [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/17 "2012-07-25T12:10:15Z")
> [@AaronX](#):
>
> Some people think the density of our oceans increases enough for scrap to float before reaching the bottom too.
Scrap-what? Metal? Got a cite for that?
Even if some people think that, it’s not true. At the deepest part of the ocean, where ambient pressure is around 16,000 psi, the density of the water there is only about 6% greater than it is at the surface. Aluminum will still sink quite readily in this medium.
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### Author:  [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/18 "2012-07-25T12:26:03Z")
Yes it doesn’t seem to be true. Can’t remember where I read it though, maybe it was science fiction?
I think this point in the discussion depends on the situation. Are you teleported in? Freefall? Do you have rocket boosters to slow you down like our rovers?
I don’t get why they call Jupiter “gas” if it’s solid inside though. Couldn’t you say the same for Earth? The outer layers are gas, then it’s rock.
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### Author:  [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/19 "2012-07-25T12:41:55Z")
> [@Koxinga](#):
>
> By the above logic, couldn’t you just as well say that on Earth anyone falling off the side of a boat should inevitably be crushed to death by hydrostatic pressure?
You’re asking about the effects of buoyancy? Well, we can get a back-of-the-envelope approximation by using the ideal gas law and [this chart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Structure_of_Jovian_atmosphere.png) and assuming that the atmosphere is mostly molecular hydrogen. At the top of the troposphere, the density of the atmosphere should be about 0.02 kg/m[sup]3[/sup]. This increases up to about 0.16 kg/m[sup]3[/sup] by the time the pressure reaches about 1 bar, which is often considered to be the “zero altitude” on Jupiter. By the time you get down to -132 km, where the Galileo atmosphere probe failed, the density is up to 1.1 kg/m[sup]3[/sup]. Not nearly enough to float in, or even tread water.
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### Author:  [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2012, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/standing-on-jupiter/629321/20 "2012-07-25T13:18:12Z")
That makes sense, thanks.
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