<chirp, chirp> “Moire here.”
“Moire, you were holding out on me. Eddie’s, fifteen minutes.”
“Not so fast, Walt. That wasn’t me holding out, that was you leaving too soon. From now on you’re paying quite a bit more. And it’ll be thirty minutes.”
“So we’re negotiating, hmm?”
“That’s about the size of it. You still interested?”
“My people are, they sent me back here. Oh well. Thirty minutes.”
Thirty-three minutes later I walk into Eddie’s. Walt’s already gotten a table. He beckons, points to the freshly‑served pizza, raises an eyebrow.
“Apology accepted. What made your people unhappy?”
“You told me flat‑out that the Sun’s gravity couldn’t affect those zonal harmonics. Do you have anything to back that up?”
“Symmetry. Zonal harmonics and latitude are about north‑south. Each Jn is a pole‑to‑pole variation pattern. The only way solar gravity can tilt Jupiter’s north‑south axis is to exert torque along the zonal harmonics. Jupiter’s equator is within 3° of edge‑on to the Sun.” <showing an image on Old Reliable’s screen> “Here’s what the Sun sees looking at J10, for instance. Solar pull on any northern zone segment, say, would be counteracted by an equal pull on the corresponding southern segment of the same zone. No net torque, no tilt. J0‘s the only exception. It’s simply a sphere that doesn’t vary across the whole planet. The Sun’s pull along J0‘s arc can’t tilt Jupiter.”
“Okay, so the zonal picture’s too simple. Just one set of waves, running up and down the planet—”
“No, not running. One way to characterize a wave is by how its components change with time. You’re thinking like ocean waves that move from place to place as time goes by. There’s also standing waves like on a guitar string, where individual points move but the peaks and valleys don’t. There’s time‑only waves like how the day length here changes through the year. And there’s static waves where time’s not even in the equation. Jupiter’s stripes don’t move, they’re peaks and valleys in a static wave pattern. By definition, the zonal harmonic system is static like that. But you’re right, it’s only part of the picture.”
“Give me the part the Sun’s gravitational field does play with.”
“That’d be two parts — sectorial and radial harmonics. Sectorial is zonal’s perpendicular twin. Zonal wave patterns show variation along the polar axis; sectorial wave patterns Cm vary around it. I’m keeping it non‑technical for you but Cm‘s actually cos(m*x) where x is the longitude.”
“Just don’t let it go any farther.”
“I’ll try not to. My point is that each sector pattern can be labeled with a positive integer just like we did with the zones.”
“If the Jn arcs aren’t affected by solar gravity, why would I care about these Cms?”
“You wouldn’t, except for the fact that mass distribution across Jupiter’s sectors is probably lumpy. We know the Great Red Spot holds its position in the southern hemisphere and the planet’s magnetic field points way off to the side. Maybe those features mark off‑center mass deficits and concentrations. Suppose a particular sectorial wave’s peak sits directly over a mass lump or hole. Everything under that harmonic’s influence is tugged back and forth by solar gravity each time the wave traverses the day side. Juno in its N‑S path just isn’t an efficient sensor for those tugs. Good sectorial sensing would require an orbiter on an E‑W path, preferably right over the equator. Any orbital wobbles we’d see could be fed into a sectorial gravity map. Cross that with the zonal map and we’d be able to locate underlying mass variations by latitude and longitude.”
“Not a good idea. Gravity’s not the only field in play. You’ve just mentioned Jupiter’s magnetic field. I’ve read it’s stronger than any other planet’s. If your E‑W orbiter’s built with even a small amount of iron, you’d have a hard time deciding which field was responsible for any observed irregularities.”
“Good point. The idea’s even worse than you think, though. Jupiter’s sulfur‑coated moon—”
“Io. Yes, your induction‑heating idea might even be real. What about it?”
“I haven’t written yet about the high‑voltage Io‑to‑Jupiter bridge made of sulfur, oxygen and hydrogen ions. Jupiter’s magnetism plays a complicated game with them but the result is a chaotic sheet of radiating plasma around the planet’s equator. An E‑W orbiter in there would be tossed about like a paper boat on the ocean.”
~~ Rich Olcott
