jupiter layer cake

i'm slightly experimental with my baking and cooking, but this jupiter structural layer cake requires some serious skills and experience.   the layers are not to scale, but wow wow wow - look at the icing and the round layers inside.   so impressive!!   

Jupiter Structural Layer Cake: outside (Credit: CakeCrumbs)

Jupiter Structural Layer Cake: inside (Credit: CakeCrumbs)

the main feature most people recognize on jupiter's surface is the giant red storm - a hurricane twice the size of the earth!

Jupiter Structural Layer Cake: outside (Credit: CakeCrumbs)

the oddity of jupiter is its interior.   the giant planet has no solid surface on which one could stand and watch the stars.  instead, about 90% of the planet's atoms are hydrogen.  in the outer regions, the hydrogen is a transparent gas, like on earth, but then conditions change as you go deeper inside.

the pressure starts to increase as you go farther down towards the center, and the increased pressure makes the gas more dense, until it becomes "liquid metallic hydrogen" - a state of hydrogen not produced naturally on earth.

there is probably a rocky core at the very center of jupiter, but actually, we really dont know.

Jupiter Structural Layer Cake: inside (Credit: CakeCrumbs)

we'll know more about the biggest planet in our solar system, jupiter, soon(ish), when the spacecraft called juno reaches its destination in 2+ years.  the SWRI mission webpage has a cool animation of how we think our solar system and jupiter formed.  stay tuned!