Patricia Davidson age 12, of Neill, Nebr 

Can there be plant life on Jupiter?

If you have a telescope, even a small one, you can get a close look at giant Jupiter  This,, the biggest of the planets by far, is due to rise late in the evening  Wait until Scorpio, the Scorpion, is high in the sky  This is one of the easiest of the summer constellations to find  There are three bright stars in a row to mark the scorpion s claws and a great S curve swooping down to the tail  Rising behind the Scorpion comes the constellation Sagittarius, the Archer  Its stars look like a teapot or a pair of saddlebags, The bright planet rising after Sagittarius is Saturn  The still brighter planet rising after Saturn Is Jupiter, the Giant 

If the night is very clear, you can see dim bands of dark and light in parallel lines across the face of Jupiter, A powerful telescope shows these bands to be clouds of creamy tan and pearly grey  So Jupiter, like the earth, has an atmosphere  Astronomers tell us, however, that it is a very different atmosphere from ours  There is no oxygen, nor is there carbon dioxide which is so necessary to plant life 

The latest evidence suggests that Jupiter has an atmosphere mostly of hydrogen gas in which float foggy clouds of methane and ammonia, two gases which to us are poisonous  Methane, however, is the so‑called marsh gas given off by decaying vegetation  The great planet is 11 times wider than the earth, yet it whirls around on its axis in about 10 hours  Its cloud bands heave and toes as though Jupiter suffered violent storms throughout its entire year, which is equal to almost 12 earth years 

 Such a stormy planet, with no oxygen and no carbon dioxide,, is not a likely place to support the lush green plant life which covers our earth, But, you may think, there are warm, sheltered spots on Jupiter where plants could survive  This could not be, for the big planet is five times further from the sun than we are and therefore gets but a fraction of the light and heat which falls upon the earth  The temperature of its clouds is estimated to be minus 130 centigrade degrees  The plant life we know on earth cannot survive at this temperature  It is even cold

enough to destroy the simple, one‑celled bacteria plants and their spores which are tough enough to survive through long periods of cold, drought and other hardship 

The surface of Jupiter 1s most likely a slushy mess of partly frozen gases, Many experts think that a man would sink, maybe miles, down through the planet  At any rate, because of the greater gravity of the giant planet, he would weigh two and a half times more than his weight on earth  It is not likely that any tree could take root in the soupy surface and the mighty gravity of Jupiter would be exerted on any plant that tried to live on or in the frozen materials of the thick, outer crust 

Our information about Jupiter indicates that it is a far from friendly planet to both plant and animal life as we know it  But there are many, many things we do not know about the possibility of life on other planets, However, Jupiter has none of the right conditions to support the kind of life we have on earth.

For further information on Jupiter go Jet Propulsion site listed in Science News on our main menu.