Jupiter's Children

There is a lot of energy associated with Jupiter. Everything about it is colossal. It rotates faster than any other planet. There are strong winds and enormous storms. Its famous red spot is a storm the size of a planet that has raged for centuries. The whole planet is under intense stress, and the way it alleviates this is by spinning fast and generating storms.

However, these two actions may not always be sufficient. If Jupiter comes under sufficient stress it must find a third way to rid itself of surplus energy.

An effective way to do so would be to shed some of its atmosphere.

As we have seen, meteorites explode when under sufficient electrical stress. Comets shed matter by growing a tail. This is how electrical stress is alleviated. Matter is ejected from the stressed body.

The way Jupiter will do this is by first producing a big storm, rich in minerals. This storm will have a dark brown or red colour. It may last for centuries and it may never be ejected. However, under sufficient stress, Jupiter will eject the mineral rich storm.

The famous red spot on Jupiter is not just a storm. It is an embryonic moon.

This embryo can either return into nothing, absorbed by Jupiter itself, or it can compact into an intensely hot and charged ball the size of a moon or a planet.

Large storm ejected from Jupiter in the form of a moon

At the moment, the red spot on Jupiter is becoming smaller in diameter, and at the same time taller. If this continues, Jupiter will give birth to yet another child.

Should that happen, we must hope that the birth is relatively uneventful and that the child quickly settles in among its siblings as yet another moon of Jupiter, because a white-hot extremely charged body emanating from Jupiter is a very accurate description of the rogue planet we have been looking for.

Putting all the evidence together, we get the following description of the fateful events that led to the destruction of Phaeton.

Already under considerable stress, Jupiter was antagonized by the smaller planets closer to the sun. They lined up in the direction of Jupiter, allowing for a freer flow of energy from the Sun to Jupiter.

The additional energy provoked the birth of a planet with sufficient momentum to escape the gravitational pull of Jupiter. The new planet raced towards the Sun, following the electric current set up by the planetary alignment.

Planetary alignment and path of rogue planet

The rogue planet was on a collision course with Phaeton, Mars and Earth.

Unloading the bulk of its charge on Phaeton, it obliterated it. On its way passed Mars, it scarred it badly. By the time it reached Earth, it had unloaded most of its charge. Yet, it was still able to zap Grand Canyon into our planet's surface.