Original subtitles

Jupiter... Our largest planetary neighbor.

Jupiter is the king of the planets for a good reason.

It's the biggest.

It dominated the evolution of the solar system.

Jupiter is a violent world of radiation and storms

on an epic scale.

The interior of Jupiter is kind of hard to imagine.

There may be a layer inside Jupiter

where you get diamond rain.

Today, NASA's Juno mission

is unraveling Jupiter's deepest secrets.

What forces shape its mysterious storms

and cause volcanic eruptions

that jet lava deep into space?

Jupiter actually has more in common with our sun

than it does with any of the other planets

in the solar system.

We venture deep inside the most extreme planet

in the solar system

to reveal its inner secrets and investigate

if Jupiter could actually be the sun's secret twin.

Have you ever dreamed about traveling out of this world?

My name is Mike Massimino,

and I turned that fantasy into a reality

when I space-walked to repair the Hubble space telescope.

Great job, Mike.

Now as we expand our knowledge of our solar system

from Mercury to the cosmic unknowns,

I want to take you on a personal journey to...

Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by discovery communications

welcome to "the planets."

I'm Mike Massimino.

Of all the planets in our solar system,

Jupiter is hands-down the biggest and the baddest.

It's a beast of a world full of radiation and violent storms.

It's got so much power,

it's basically its own mini-solar system.

And thanks to the new amazing high-resolution images

from NASA's Juno mission,

more of Jupiter's secrets are being revealed.

Jupiter... The fifth planet from the sun

and the largest in the solar system.

Made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium,

Jupiter stretches more than 85,000 miles across.

It's unfathomably big.

You know, you can fit 1,000 earths inside.

Now scientists have launched a mission

to study Jupiter

in more detail than ever before.

The Juno spacecraft that launched in 2011

reached Jupiter's orbit in 2016,

where it is capturing close-up images and collecting data.

And these newest findings from Juno show a unique

and extraordinarily complex world.

Jupiter has 67 known moons

and probably a giant number of ones

that are not yet known.

It's like a miniature solar system all of its own.

It's a whole environment, a whole ecosystem.

The conditions on and around Jupiter are extreme.

It doesn't behave like an ordinary planet.

Formed at the beginning of the solar system

from the same stuff as the sun,

Jupiter is an enigma.

Is it hiding a secret history?

Could Jupiter be a star in disguise?

Spread across 50 square miles

of baking sand in the scorching Mojave desert,

these giant telescopes

listen for radio signals in outer space.

NASA's Steve Levin is on the front line,

unlocking the secrets of Jupiter.

We've known about Jupiter for thousands of years,

and we've studied it with telescopes

for hundreds of years.

In fact, Jupiter was one of the very first objects

in the sky that was studied with telescopes.

But when we started using radio telescopes,

we learned a lot of surprises about Jupiter.

These telescopes observe space by looking at radio waves

rather than visible light.

And the radio waves that come from Jupiter

aren't what scientists expect to see from a planet.

One of the surprises was this enormous bright radio source

that turned out to be Jupiter.

Jupiter gives off a huge radio signal

far too bright for its size.

Scientists think these signals

are created by small, charged particles

interacting with a magnetic field.

Most planets have a magnetic field,

but Jupiter's is far larger than any other.

In fact, the Juno spacecraft proved

that Jupiter's magnetic field

is 10 times stronger than that of the earth.

So what is causing Jupiter's huge magnetic field?

Scientists believe the answer might lie

within alien chemistry deep within the planet.

More than 300 million miles from earth,

Jupiter is an unimaginably different world.

It's a planet that astronomers call a "gas giant."

It's made almost entirely from hydrogen,

the same material that forms stars like the sun.

But beneath its cloudy surface, a darkness looms.

Scientists believe a thick, black liquid swirls below,

where intense pressures and temperatures

transform hydrogen into a strange new substance.

The secret of Jupiter's giant magnetic field

may lie within this abyss.

Scientists in Edinburgh are conducting

a remarkable experiment to find out.

So, we call Jupiter a gas giant,

but beneath the clouds of Jupiter,

the planet's not really made of gas.

It's made of something much, much stranger.

Scientists know that Jupiter is 90% hydrogen.

Let's go. Things work fast

when they work here.

This equipment can recreate some of the

incredibly high pressures found inside Jupiter,

to find out what happens to a gas

under the extreme conditions deep inside the planet.

In the bottom of the ocean, the pressure from all the water

that's on top of you

is about 1,000 times earth's atmospheric pressure.

And in the center of the earth,

it's about a million times.

But in the center of Jupiter,

it's almost a billion times

the pressure of earth's atmosphere.

Stewart is going to expose a gas

more commonly found on earth

to the pressures found deep within Jupiter.

He uses oxygen because it's easier to control

in the lab, yet reacts to pressure

in the same way as hydrogen.

Oxygen is very similar to hydrogen,

and so, they have similar properties

when you put them under pressure inside a planet.

At low pressures, light can easily pass through the sample.

If I put my hand behind the sample,

the light goes away.

So, we're seeing light, now, coming through oxygen,

and we're able to see right through it.

And of course, oxygen, like hydrogen,

when you squeeze on it, it starts to change.

Stewart begins to squeeze the gas.

Under extreme pressures,

the structure of oxygen transforms.

- 62, 63. - There it goes.

The oxygen has now just turned solid,

and crystals are starting to form in the system.

The oxygen becomes opaque.

It's beginning to change its structure.

We're starting to see, the oxygen's beginning

to turn a little bit darker and a little more orange,

and there it goes.

We've turned, now, our oxygen sample

into a totally black substance here.

We were trying to shine light through it,

and it's being totally absorbed inside the oxygen.

Stewart believes his experiments prove that the pressure

within Jupiter transforms hydrogen gas

into a new, different state.

But this isn't enough to explain

Jupiter's enormous magnetic field.

An even stranger force must be at work.

Deeper inside the planet,

the conditions intensify.

Beneath the dark hydrogen,

scientists think there's an even more bizarre layer...

An ocean of liquid, metallic hydrogen,

an exotic state of hydrogen that doesn't exist on earth.

12,000 miles deep, this metallic ocean transforms the planet

into an enormous dynamo.

As it spins, it creates a magnetic field

that extends nearly 4 million miles around Jupiter,

the biggest planetary structure in the solar system.

Scientists now believe metallic hydrogen

powers Jupiter's magnetic field.

But in the lab, it's proving difficult to make.

The only possible explanation for that magnetic field

is the existence of a metallic state of hydrogen

deep within Jupiter. And so, it's really...

Experiments are trying to catch up to nature.

The pressure inside Jupiter is unrivaled

by the other planets in our solar system.

Only the sun creates a greater force.

Jupiter is so big, so massive that,

we know, as you descend into the interior of Jupiter,

you will reach pressures

where an element like hydrogen

doesn't just liquify.

It actually begins to behave like a metal.

Now, the reason a metal is shiny is that,

metal atoms actually share electrons.

And with the hydrogen compressed so close together,

the same thing happens,

and you get metallic hydrogen.

This metallic hydrogen is something

that is very difficult to make.

But because Jupiter is so powerful, it's so cool,

and it has such awesome gravity,

it can create metallic hydrogen.

Jupiter's magnetic field reaches out deep into space.

When tiny charged particles come into contact with it,

they produce radio waves

that telescopes can detect on earth.

Scientists observing Jupiter in ultraviolet light

can see an extraordinary phenomena

caused by the magnetic field...

Huge auroras,

the brightest and biggest in the solar system.

The auroras here on earth,

our northern and Southern lights,

are caused by the interaction of our magnetic field

with particles from the sun.

Well, Jupiter's magnetic field is so extreme,

it actually generates auroras all by itself.

But the unparalleled brightness of Jupiter's auroras

can't be explained by its magnetic field alone.

What awesome power is fueling Jupiter's auroras?

When I first travelled to the Hubble space telescope

as an astronaut,

I was mesmerized by how bright the colors in space were.

The sun's light was the whitest white I had ever seen.

I can only imagine how bright the massive auroras around

Jupiter look from space.

But what's causing this majestic light show around Jupiter?

NASA's Juno spacecraft is on the mission to find out.

Jupiter behaves more like a star

than an ordinary planet, like earth.

It's made from the same stuff as the sun,

and supercharged auroras suggest

that extremely powerful radiation surrounds Jupiter.

This makes getting near to the planet very difficult.

Trying to get anywhere close to Jupiter

is really, really hard

because of the intense radiation of the magnetic field.

So, when you send a spacecraft,

you understand it's not gonna live for very long.

We've not been to Jupiter that many times,

which is one reason NASA's Juno mission is so exciting.

The Juno spacecraft has been sent

right into the heart of Jupiter's auroras

to discover the secrets behind the radiation

that causes them.

Launched in 2011,

Juno traveled at more than 124,000 miles per hour,

to reach Jupiter in 2016.

It's currently orbiting the planet,

and will circle it 37 times during its mission.

While in orbit, Juno is sending back images of Jupiter

like we've never seen before.

This first-ever infrared image of Jupiter's Southern lights

shows off its incredible auroras.

This is NASA's jet propulsion laboratory in California.

It's the nerve center for the Juno mission.

The data's looking amazing.

All the scientists are incredibly excited.

Heidi Becker is studying the radiation environment

around Jupiter using Juno.

When Juno went through the really nasty

radiation environment for the first time,

it's kind of an edge-of-your-seat-type moment.

Heidi measures the strength of radiation around Jupiter

by looking at photographs of stars

taken by the Juno spacecraft.

This is a regular,

radiation-free image

collected by Juno's star tracker.

The stars appear like points of light,

like you're used to when you look up at the stars at night.

The stars are constant points of light in the photograph,

but when radiation particles hit the camera,

they appear, suddenly, as additional white spots

and streaks of light.

So, each of these frames is another level of radiation.

And all of these squiggles and holes

that are being added to this star field,

that's the radiation signature.

These are the radiation particles

that create Jupiter's auroras.

The particles are kind of like machine-gun fire,

creating bullet holes in an image.

And so, we can count those individual bullet holes,

and that's what helps me understand

the radiation environment.

So, one person's noise is another person's music or data.

This data from Juno allows scientists

to map the planet's radiation.

The radiation fields of Jupiter are so intense,

we know they're going to eventually fry our spacecraft.

Juno has on the order of about a 2-year lifetime.

We understand that.

This intense radiation lights up Jupiter's auroras,

but where does it come from?

What's feeding Jupiter's magnetic field with radiation?

Scientists looking for evidence have spotted clues

in a mysterious bright spot

tracing a path across the lights.

They now think that lo,

one of the 67 moons that orbit Jupiter,

holds the key to the planet's auroras.

There's this very intense magnetic interaction

between Jupiter and its moons,

and you can actually see this in the Aurora.

And you see a glowing spot moving around in the auroras.

And one of the most dramatic ones,

the most dramatic footprints to see, is that of lo.

Io orbits at 217,000 miles from Jupiter,

held in place by the planet's massive gravity.

It's nothing like the moon that orbits earth.

When we sent our first spacecraft,

we saw, amazingly,

volcanoes going off.

Could these remote volcanoes

be the source of Jupiter's supercharged auroras?

On my second mission on space shuttle Atlantis,

we brought a replica of Galileo's telescope

just like the one that he used to discover

Jupiter's four largest moons, including lo.

In Galileo's wildest dreams,

he probably never would've theorized that volcanoes

on lo would be playing a role in

Jupiter's stunning auroras.

But that's just what some scientists

are on the hunt to prove.

Scientists at Syracuse university in New York

are investigating if volcanoes on lo

are the cause of Jupiter's magnificent auroras

by making their own volcano.

I've poured lava over 1,000 times,

and probably have seen more lava

than a lot of volcanologists.

Professor Bob Wysocki runs the lava project.

He uses his homemade furnace to replicate

the geological conditions on other worlds.

Tonight, he's gearing up to investigate

how volcanic activity on one of Jupiter's moons

might fuel the planet's deadly radiation

and light up its auroras.

Bob heats basalt rock until it melts.

The furnace burns at 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit.

It takes an immense amount of energy

to melt even a small amount of rock.

So, where does lo get the energy

to fuel its volcanoes?

All signs point to lo's immense immense and malevolent neighbor,

Jupiter.

The planet traps lo in a gravitational tug-of-war

with other orbiting moons.

Inside lo, the relentless push and pull from Jupiter

heats up the interior to melting point,

creating smoldering currents beneath the surface.

As the pressure builds,

the lava finally erupts through the moon's crust.

It shoots scorching fountains of lava

up to half-a-mile high

and floods the frozen surface with molten rock.

- Okay, Jeff, you ready to go? - Yeah.

In Syracuse, Bob is ready to pour the lava.

We are just that one step below

what comes out of a volcano

and making and replicating what happens in nature.

Well, we're doing an experiment today

to try to better understand

what happens when ice meets lava.

Geologist Jeff Karson is joining Bob

to see what happens when volcanoes erupt on lo.

Io is extremely cold.

Its surface is made from sulfur dioxide that is frozen solid.

Bob monitors the furnace, while Jeff examines

how lava interacts with the ice.

The physics that govern the way the lava flows form,

the way they cool, the shapes they take on,

these are all the same on other planetary objects,

but the same basic physics applies.

Scientists believe that the hot lava

pouring out of lo's volcanoes

onto its icy surface

has a direct effect on Jupiter's radiation.

Moving onto the ice,

a bunch of bubbles are starting to form.

You see a completely different style

of behavior of the lava here.

I'm gonna step back, actually,

'cause I can feel the heat so intensely here.

But those bubbles are forming

because water vapor is being produced,

boiling the water in the ice.

The vapor is escaping through the lava

and blowing these beautiful bubbles.

It's a really good analog

for what could be happening on other planetary objects,

like on lo.

The hot lava causes the frozen ice

to instantly vaporize into clouds of steam.

On a place like lo,

it would be sulfur that's being vaporized,

and sulfur dioxide making bubbles

and being released into the atmosphere.

Scientists now think that vaporized sulfur dioxide

is the key ingredient

to explain Jupiter's extraordinary auroras.

Io's volcanoes vaporize the toxic sulfur dioxide.

They blast it into a nearly 50-mile umbrella plume.

One ton every second flies into orbit around Jupiter.

The sulfur dioxide supercharges

the deadly radiation belt around the planet

with a lethal particle storm.

Jupiter's magnetic field then captures

the sulfur dioxide particles

and accelerates them to the poles of the planet

at almost the speed of light.

They strike Jupiter's atmosphere

and create the spectacular Aurora patterns,

over 100 times more energetic

than the northern lights on earth.

And now, thanks to Juno imagery,

scientists have confirmed that lo's volcanoes

are indeed contributing to this massive light show.

These eruptions on Jupiter's moon

help generate a lethal radiation engulfing the whole planet.

But it's not just radiation that makes Jupiter so extreme.

Deadly storms rage on the surface.

Today, Juno is sending back photos

of unimaginable weather systems,

enormously more powerful than even the most

terrifying hurricanes on earth.

The weather on Jupiter is pretty darn extreme.

There are these belts that have winds

that are zooming around very quickly,

and then in one direction in one

and then the other direction in the other.

Among all the swirling bands,

there's an enigma,

one feature that doesn't seem to change...

Jupiter's famous great red spot.

When I space-walked for the first time in 2002

to help repair the Hubble space telescope,

I just couldn't believe how incredible the earth

looked from outer space.

One of the coolest sights were the lightning storms.

But the storms on earth are nothing compared to

the ferocious ones on Jupiter.

And as scientists find out more about these storms,

they're unlocking the secrets

to the planet's mysterious red spot.

Jupiter... more than 1,000 times larger than the earth.

It's the biggest and baddest planet

in the solar system.

It's so deadly, it seems to have more in common

with the sun than a planet like earth.

Jupiter has single storms

that are larger than its neighboring planets.

They rage for centuries and create

its unmistakable appearance.

If you were to go to Jupiter, you'd be in for

some very serious weather.

But, hey, maybe the kitesurfing would be good,

or the parachuting, because you have to deal with

some serious winds and some serious storms.

In 2017, the Juno mission sent back photos of Jupiter's poles,

which were covered in dense, massive storms.

The Southern pole boasts cyclones

that are 600 miles in diameter,

the size of Texas.

And close to Jupiter's northern pole,

this anti-cyclonic storm is 3,700 miles long,

bigger than the entire U.S.

But even this storm doesn't compare

to Jupiter's great red spot.

The great red spot

is this gigantic swirling storm

that has lasted for hundreds of years.

You know, storms on earth don't last that long.

Jupiter's great red spot is one of the biggest

and oldest storms in the solar system.

The Juno cam captured the closest-ever photos of the spot

on July 10, 2017,

recording storm clouds moving at over 350 miles per hour.

But the mystery remains. What keeps it spinning?

Scientists at UCLA's spinlab in California

are trying to understand Jupiter's extreme weather.

It would be impossible for us to get to Jupiter and survive,

so we have the next best thing. Here at spinlab,

we do simulations of Jupiter in the lab.

Juan Lora has a surprising tool

to understand Jupiter's atmosphere...

A tank of water.

With this setup here,

we are simulating a planetary atmosphere in the lab.

I know it doesn't look much like a planet,

but imagine just looking down at the center of the table,

and that represents the polar region of the planet.

The table will spin.

So, as you head out to the edges of the table,

that represents lower latitudes on the planet.

Jupiter is the fastest spinning planet

in the solar system.

A day on Jupiter lasts only 10 hours.

The fluid in the table is now spinning

like a planetary atmosphere would be.

So, now, we're gonna add some dye,

and let's see what happens.

The colored fluids represent different cloud systems.

This experiment should reveal clues

about how they interact.

Adding any sort of turbulence to a rotating fluid

will create some interesting dynamics.

Juan stirs the water to create turbulence.

Turbulence occurs in Jupiter's atmosphere

when gasses of different temperatures and speeds

come together.

Once you get turbulence, and you disturb a fluid

that is rotating quickly,

like this tank and like Jupiter, then you get these vortices.

And the vortices are very stable,

and they like to interact with each other sometimes.

This is like the red spot.

As soon as it was formed,

it is able to be maintained

by the rotation of Jupiter.

Jupiter's rotation energizes the great red spot

and keeps it spinning.

But how did it get so large in the first place?

The great red spot is larger than whole planets.

Winds whip around it at over 400 miles per hour to form a cyclone

that rises nearly 5 miles above the clouds.

The striking red color is believed to be the gas

reacting with the sun's rays.

Behind the sunburnt surface,

these twisting clouds remain gray inside.

As smaller storms approach,

they are ruthlessly cannibalized by the giant.

Their energy and spin

add to the great red spot's size and power.

Is this superstorm destined to rage forever?

Today, scientists can see something strange is happening.

Jupiter's great red spot

has been changing over the past 20 years.

So, here, an image taken in 1995,

where you can see that the great red spot

is quite large and oval-shaped.

If you compare this image to one taken in 2009,

the spot has become more circular,

and it's also smaller in size.

And then, from 2014, shows, again,

a further shrinkage of the spot.

These NASA photos show just how much the spot has changed

from 1994 to the newest image in 2017.

The great red spot feeds on other storms to survive.

It consumes them,

absorbing their energy to keep spinning.

And if it's not fed, it'll starve.

It's possible that, in the past 20 years,

fewer of those vortices have come into contact

with the great red spot.

Scientists also think that some smaller storms

could actually damage the great red spot.

Another possibility is that it's eating,

if you will, vortices that are spinning more slowly

than it is spinning,

and therefore, there's a net loss of spin.

Storms that move more slowly or spin in the opposite direction

could be putting the brakes on the great red spot.

Its extraordinary longevity could simply be

an exceptional streak of luck

that's only now running out.

The fact that it's changing, and so quickly,

and so dramatically, after being stable

for so long, does suggest that, maybe,

something is taking place.

Maybe it will shrink till the point we can't see it.

We don't know. We have to keep watching.

Only time will tell if Jupiter's most famous feature

will survive another 100 years.

The extreme physics on Jupiter

creates unparalleled weather systems visible from space,

and scientists are just beginning to understand

the conditions inside the planet's clouds.

What they're finding is extraordinary.

One of the big surprises

when we got to Jupiter with a spacecraft,

was to see that there was lightning on the dark side.

These images taken by NASA spacecraft

are evidence of lightning strikes in Jupiter's atmosphere.

They could trigger an astonishing chemical reaction

deep inside Jupiter's colorful clouds.

A thick fog of gas surrounds Jupiter.

Friction in the clouds generates super bolts of lightning.

These strikes are many times more powerful

than lightning on earth.

62 miles beneath the surface,

the clouds harbor methane, as well as hydrogen.

When the superheated electric shock

rips through the atmosphere,

the conditions are perfect

for an extraordinary chemical reaction

unlike anything else in the solar system.

There's no question that 85,000 miles across,

Jupiter is the king of all planets in the solar system.

And the amazing forces at play on this hostile planet

can create millions of jewels fit for a crown.

Jupiter's lightning bolts are stronger

than anything we've witnessed on earth,

and the resulting chemical reaction

unleashes a shower of unimaginable riches.

The lightning transforms the elements into diamonds.

Jupiter keeps its bling on the inside,

because it may be raining diamonds.

Now, think about this.

Jupiter has incredibly strong winds,

and diamonds are really hard.

So, talk about a hail storm.

Scientists at Cardiff university

are trying to understand

how diamonds might be created out of thin air on Jupiter.

Professor Oliver Williams simulates Jupiter's

lightning-charged atmosphere in the lab.

I'm using an airtight chamber that I've sucked all the air out

to make a vacuum.

I'm flowing in 99% hydrogen and 1% methane,

and this is like the atmosphere of Jupiter.

But the experiment really begins when Oliver adds

the final ingredient... Lightning.

I'm gonna break this gas down using high-power microwaves.

This is very like lightning,

where the high electric field is breaking down the air

and making these lightning bolts.

Microwaves, like lightning on Jupiter,

break down hydrogen and methane gas.

It glows purple as the atoms break apart.

So, diamond is fundamentally made out of carbon.

Methane is actually carbon with four hydrogen atoms,

and we're able to strip these hydrogen away.

The microwaves release carbon atoms from methane gas.

The atoms join together to form a diamond.

Inside this chamber,

a slice of diamond literally grows out of thin air.

So, what we've done is, we've broken down these gasses

that you do see in places like Jupiter.

And from this chemistry, we've grown a crystalline form

of carbon, which is diamond.

Experiments like this suggest diamonds form like hail

in Jupiter's lightning storms.

But something even more extraordinary happens

as they fall.

As the diamonds are zapped into existence,

they begin to descend

through the atmosphere as diamond hail stones.

They plummet thousands of miles

through Jupiter's atmosphere, towards the core,

racing into higher and higher pressures and temperatures.

When they hit 14,400 degrees,

they melt, creating a shower of liquid diamond raindrops.

But what comes next

is an even more bizarre theoretical possibility.

Diamond rain could lead

to a sparkling diamond ocean far below.

Jupiter's world may be stranger than science fiction.

The extreme physics on Jupiter

creates weather totally unlike anything on earth.

The tremendous forces forge a unique world

in our solar system.

In fact, Jupiter behaves more like a star

than a mere planet.

Could Jupiter actually be the sun's secret twin?

Jupiter and earth are almost nothing alike.

In fact, Jupiter doesn't share many qualities

with any of the planets in our solar system.

What if Jupiter wasn't supposed to be a planet at all?

What if it's really a star in disguise?

Images captured from NASA's Juno mission in 2017 show

that Jupiter is a planet of extremes.

It dwarfs every other planet in the solar system.

So, was Jupiter meant to be a star?

Just as the sun is made primarily of hydrogen,

so is Jupiter.

And so, it looks like a star,

only it's one that's not burning.

Jupiter is really massive,

and it's held onto its hydrogen.

So, that's kind of unusual in the solar system,

is to have a planet made of hydrogen.

Scientists are beginning to understand how Jupiter formed

by investigating what happened

in the early solar system.

They're hunting for clues

by observing the birth of other distant stars.

Deep in the deserts of California

sits the Owens valley radio observatory.

These dishes make up the Carma radio telescope array.

This location is absolutely gorgeous.

Astronomer John Tobin scans the skies for newborn stars.

Rather than building one really big radio telescope,

which is very difficult to do,

they built a lot of small dishes.

Then they linked them together.

And the further apart you move them,

the higher resolution you get,

which means it acts like a bigger telescope,

and you can see finer detail.

John is looking for protostars,

brand-new stars

that are only just condensing

from a vast cloud of gas and debris.

A protostar is a newborn star,

so it's still in the process of forming

and building up its mass.

And in interstellar space,

there are clouds of gas and dust,

and at the center, a protostar will be born.

Jupiter was formed from the same clouds of hydrogen gas

and dust that formed stars.

Could it have formed like a protostar?

John is finding evidence thousands of light-years away

that explains how star systems form.

This image is showing you

that the black and the contours,

they're the intensity of the radiation

that we're detecting from this protostar.

There's not just one protostar,

but there's two protostars.

So, these two peaks that you see here and here,

those are the two forming protostars.

It's a solar system very different from our own.

And my first reaction to this was, "wow."

I couldn't believe the detail

that we were seeing towards this object.

Because previously, we knew there was one thing there,

but then we found out that there looks like

there's at least two objects around this protostar.

And so, that was unexpected.

We didn't know that we were gonna find that,

and so that was a surprise to us.

Could Jupiter have once stood toe-to-toe with the sun?

From the outside, each young star system looks alike,

starting life as a spiraling disc of dust and gas.

But what evolves inside can be very different.

Deep in the middle of the disc,

turbulence can cause the central cloud

to split into two and collapse into not one,

but two shining stars in the center.

The stars orbit each other in a hypnotic dance.

Born from the same cloud,

this solar system has twin stars.

Any dust and gas left over will go on to form planets.

In our solar system, the sun is the only shining star.

But another massive ball of hydrogen

quietly orbits from afar... Jupiter.

Could this planet be the sun's double that didn't ignite?

Scientists believe that solar systems

with twin suns are very common.

Well, since that first result using these telescopes here,

we've been carrying out a much larger survey of protostars,

in order to see just how many star systems form with two

or three or more stars.

And we're finding that a surprisingly large number

of star systems form with more than one star.

John wants to try to discover the precise conditions

that create these binary solar systems,

where two stars orbit each other.

We've been putting together a compendium of images

of young star systems in order to find out

which ones are binary or multiple.

So, this one is a single-star system.

This one here is a double.

As many as half of all stars

in the universe have a partner star,

both formed from a single disc of gas and dust

that breaks apart.

The system we were looking at is located right here,

where the clouds of gas are kind of stretched out and extended.

There might be multiple centers of collapse

that can lead to the formation of more than one star.

A cloud of gas and dust that is stretched out

will likely collapse into multiple stars

very close to each other.

John thinks our solar system

must have formed in a different way.

So, we think our own solar system

may have looked something more like this one,

where you have just one star surrounded by its disc,

and then the disc itself is lower mass

and is not going to fragment into more than one star.

Scientists believe the type of hydrogen cloud

that gave rise to our solar system

cut short Jupiter's quest to become a star.

In its race to grow up, the sun got a head start,

sucking up 99% of all the matter in the young solar system.

When it reached 27 million degrees, it ignited.

Meanwhile, the same cloud was condensing into Jupiter,

rapidly snowballing to collect two-thirds

of all the matter left over.

But there was not enough matter left

for Jupiter to get big enough to ignite,

so it became a gas giant

more than double the mass of all other planets

in the solar system combined.

No normal planet,

Jupiter is the star's younger sibling.

It would make sense to think,

"well, where is the sun's binary partner?"

And immediately, the mind goes to Jupiter.

If Jupiter had gathered enough mass

to ignite into a star,

it's unlikely that the earth would have ever been formed.

The solar system would be a very different place

with twin suns.

Instead, Jupiter became the most extraordinary world

in the solar system.

Everything about Jupiter is extreme.

Its mass is more than 300 times that of earth.

You could fit 1,000 earths inside this one planet.

It has a magnetic field so intense,

it would kill you with the radiation.

Its winds blow at over 400 miles an hour.

I mean, can you imagine a more extreme place?

To me, Jupiter is perhaps

the most fascinating object in our solar system.

It's certainly the most alien.

It is an enormous,

strange ball of swirling gas

surrounded by its own miniature planetary system.

Formed at the very beginning of the solar system

from the same material as the sun,