When we come to Jupiter, we pass out into the hinterland of our Solar System. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are so far away from the Sun that their cooling proceeded more rapidly than that of Earth. Being larger, Jupiter cooled more slowly in the beginning, but the cooling proceeded to a lower temperature, since the Sun was too tar away to keep things warm as has been the case on Earth. And so Jupiter, though cooling slowly, kept on cooling and passed 150 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. If we place the date of the birth of the Sun's planets at 2,000 million years ago, for which we have good reason, and if we also place the date when life gained a permanent foothold on Earth at 300 million years ago, for which we also have good reason, then it follows that Earth required 1,700 million years to cool down to approximately 150 degrees Fahrenheit, since life started about that time. If it may be assumed that the greatly reduced heat from the Sun hastened Jupiter's cooling about as much as its greater bulk slowed it, then it may be argued that Jupiter reached the 150 degrees Fahrenheit stage at about the time Earth did, or 300 million years ago.
Measurements indicate that Jupiter's temperature to-day is about 238 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. It therefore must have lost the 150 degrees above zero plus the 238 degrees below zero, or a total of 388 degrees Fahrenheit, in 300 million years. If this reasoning is accepted, it appears like a loss of something of the order of 1.29 degrees Fahrenheit per million years. If this actually *.r. tome- thing like the actual rate of cooling, then the deadly 150 degrees below zero stage where life becomes discouraged must have been reached in 231 million years. From these very rough approximations it would follow that life may have had a sojourn on Jupiter of something about the length of time it has o, ori Earth, but that aithe present time life is in its death throes and is fast disappearing in the face of the deadly cold. This, of course, is the merest speculation, since we are not sure of the actual temperature on the surface of the planet. All we Earthians have been privileged to see of our colossal brother is the top of the clouds of frozen matter that perpetually enshroud him, the nature of which, like those enshrouding Saturn's globe, is unknown as yet. However, if our estimates of the temperature conditions are anywhere nearly right, the book of life is closing forever on Jupiter. If life appeared and if evolution has been permitted to function for something like 300 million years, life may have reached a stage of development where one species has become master of the planet, as man is on earth. If this were so, it would follow that this master creature, whatever he may be, has for hundreds of centuries been fighting the cold, just as on Mars it seems that the master creature must for hundreds of centuries have been fighting water shortage. But it is a losing fight, for defeat is inevitable in the end.
Life on Jupiter, then, if we accept these estimates, is near extinction. Life on Mars is not so near its end, but the end is in sight. Life on Earth has millions of millions of years to go before the water gives out and the killing cold comes. Thus again are we confronted by evidence that indicates that life is a rarity in this cosmos of ours, for only where a star has happened to have nearly collided with another star and where one of the resulting planets happens to be just the right distance from the central star, can life, such as we know it, hope to gain a foothold and maintain it long enough to produce an intelligent being, such as you and I.
Jupiter is so big that on a clear night it is a bright star to the unaided eye. Through a telescope it is seen to have curious bands which appear to extend around the planet. These are clouds. It also has a mysterious red spot from which we are able to determine that its axial rotation occurs in about ten hours, which makes a Jupiter day only five hours long. Jupiter is slightly flattened at the poles, as is Earth. Its orbit is the enormous distance of 2,900 million miles, which it covers in 11 years and 10 months. It weighs 317 times as much as Earth, and it has 1,312 times Earth's bulk. It enjoys nine moons, and were it not for the perpetual clouds, the deadly cold and the fact that a man would be unable to lift himself against the pull of gravity, it might be rather a romantic place to live. Water, alcohol, gasoline, kerosene, and most of our liquids would be rocklike solids on Jupiter. Many of our gases would be liquids. Where Mercury would have rivers of molten lead and Earth has rivers of water, Jupiter could have rivers of ammonia, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen sulphide, and chlorine. We suspect there are no newspapers, no motor cars, no yachts, no moving- picture theaters, and no golf, weddings, births, or deaths on Jupiter.
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