Strange Blue Ring Around Jupiter

It started in late February when an amateur astronomer in Spain reported that a small, bi-colored feature was forming on the Southern Hemisphere of Jupiter.

This substance, which quickly turned blue, seemed to spew up from out of the planet's gaseous core like a cloud of smoke would do from a major forest fire or volcanic eruption on Earth. As astronomers watched, it slowly spread until it formed a ring that appears to circle the planet.

Astronomers are watching these developments closely, noting that nothing like this has ever been seen on Jupiter. The new blue band is so wide it is said it could easily measure three to four times the diameter of Earth.

Jupiter is, indeed, a mystery planet in our solar system. Even though we have sent several space probes to study and photograph this giant orb up close and personal, we still do not know if it is a ball of gas or if there is solid matter at its core.

Thus the speculations are running wide as to the cause of the blue ring.

Astronomer David Reneke, consulting editor of Sky and Space Magazine, obviously believes in the solid matter theory. He suggests that the ring is caused by a volcanic eruption or some other natural disturbance on the surface.

One observer on an Internet bulletin board said he read a story about NASA nuking Jupiter and asked if that might be the cause of the ring.

Perhaps that writer is on to something. Remember the mystery dark spot on Jupiter, somewhere in that same Southern Hemispheric area, that had scientists baffled in about October, 2003? If you go to Aaron C. Donahue's web site and look at his data file, you will see that Aaron and his sister Jennifer Sharpe did remote viewing sessions to determine what caused that dark spot. Their conclusion: a man-made object crashed into the planet.

What man-made object could that have been? Easy to conclude it was the old Galileo spacecraft that had been circling Jupiter for years, sending data to NASA. Galileo was purposely put on a collision course with Jupiter because the onboard propellant was nearly depleted. The NASA team felt that letting it crash into Jupiter was a better idea than taking a chance that it would go out of control and hit Jupiter's moon, Europa, which appears to have a surface ocean.

It was reasoned that there was a better chance of life existing on Europa than on Jupiter, so the craft was sent on its final mission into the depth of the gas giant on September 21, only weeks before the mystery black spot was noticed.

But did Galileo carry plutonium or any other material that might have caused a nuclear explosion? I have been researching that space craft for a few days and find no evidence of it. But NASA has used plutonium in space craft.

The Cassini space craft, launched in 1997, was designed for a long-range mission past Venus, Jupiter and eventually going to Saturn. In fact, Cassini is, even as I write this, approaching Saturn and sending back a range of interesting pictures.

Cassini was strongly opposed at the time of its launch because it carried a payload of 72 pounds of Plutonium Dioxide, used to keep the ship's electrical system operating for the duration of a very long flight. But while the isotope of plutonium used in Cassini is considered highly radioactive and deadly to any life form that comes in contact with it, I find no indication that it constitutes any kind of bomb, or that the ship itself could ever explode.

And as far as I know, Cassini is still in space, still a working ship, and has never collided with anything.

Thus the blue streak remains an unexplained mystery. We might assume, however, that since Galileo crashed into the planet at about that same place, it had something to do with changing the chemical structure of Jupiter and producing that interesting blue ring.

Remember that the Schumacher Comet also created several dark spots on Jupiter when it broke into pieces and struck the planet in about 1997. There was no blue ring at that time.

Have we damaged the planet? We may never know. I am troubled by the fact that human tinkering is starting to have an impact on everything in our solar system, not just Earth anymore.