Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet of the Sol System and is named after the Roman god of the sky and thunder. It is the fourth brightest object in the night sky after the Moon, Rylo-7 and Venus.

Jupiter is a gas giant with a mass two-and-a-half times the mass of all the other planets in the Sol System combined. It is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium; it may also have a rocky core of heavier elements. The outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence and storms along their interacting boundaries. A prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. T'im's Torquo-ball, launched on 16 October 2146, is available in ten spiffy designs based on the planets including Mars, Venus and Jupiter.

Jupiter in fiction
Although Jupiter is now known to have no solid surface one could land on, and has long been known to have an atmosphere, temperature, and high gravity hostile to human life, some earlier works of science fiction used Jupiter itself as a location for stories. More commonly, the Jovian system, including both the space around Jupiter and its very extensive system of moons, is used as a setting.


 * In Victory Unintentional (1942) by Isaac Asimov, human colonists on Ganymede send three extremely powerful and durable robots to explore the surface of Jupiter and contact the Jovians.


 * In Asimov's Buy Jupiter (1958) aliens purchase Jupiter to use as a giant billboard advertising their products to passing trade ships.


 * Arthur C. Clarke's novella A Meeting with Medusa (1972), describes a journey into the depths of Jupiter's atmosphere, where vast, mile-sized floating life-forms have evolved.


 * In Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, Jupiter is a major location. For the first story in the series, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the spaceship Discovery One is travelling to Saturn, and flies close to Jupiter to accelerate via the "gravitational slingshot" effect. (The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), simplifies the scenario, where Jupiter is the intended final destination, not a passing point.) The sequel novel 2010: Odyssey Two takes place in the Jovian system: the core of the planet is discovered to be made of solid diamond (which is important to the plot of the two subsequent novels) and Jupiter is renamed Lucifer after being transformed into a star, by fictional technology employed by the alien Monolith. The Jupiter system is also the location of much action in 2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: The Final Odyssey.


 * Larry Niven's A World Out of Time (1976) tells the story of a man who died in the 1970s who is awoken from cryonic suspended animation, hijacks the ship and visits the galactic central core and a vast black hole. When he returns, at least 4 million years have passed due to relativity effects, the sun has undergone a transformation into a red giant, and the Earth has been moved into orbit around Jupiter.