{"id":211496,"date":"2025-04-15T17:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T22:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/jupiters-enigmatic-weather-explained-by-confirmed-mushball-phenomenon"},"modified":"2025-04-15T17:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T22:11:08","slug":"jupiters-enigmatic-weather-explained-by-confirmed-mushball-phenomenon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/jupiters-enigmatic-weather-explained-by-confirmed-mushball-phenomenon","title":{"rendered":"Jupiter\u2019s enigmatic weather explained by confirmed \u2018mushball\u2019 phenomenon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tq_6DClZ0Ns?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Imagine a Slushee composed of ammonia and water encased in a hard shell of water ice. Now picture these ice-encrusted slushballs, dubbed \u201cmushballs,\u201d raining down like hailstones during a thunderstorm, illuminated by intense flashes of lightning.<\/p>\n<p>Planetary scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, now say that hailstorms of mushballs accompanied by fierce lightning actually exist on Jupiter. In fact, mushball hailstorms may occur on all gaseous planets in the galaxy, including our solar system\u2019s other giant planets, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of mushballs was initially put forth in 2020 to explain nonuniformities in the distribution of <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/ammonia\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">ammonia<\/a> gas in Jupiter\u2019s upper atmosphere that were detected both by NASA\u2019s Juno mission and by <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/radio+telescopes\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">radio telescopes<\/a> on Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine a Slushee composed of ammonia and water encased in a hard shell of water ice. Now picture these ice-encrusted slushballs, dubbed \u201cmushballs,\u201d raining down like hailstones during a thunderstorm, illuminated by intense flashes of lightning. Planetary scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, now say that hailstorms of mushballs accompanied by fierce lightning actually [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}