Overview

• High-resolution impact simulations published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society failed to reproduce Jupiter’s gradual, dilute core structure detected by NASA’s Juno mission.
• Across a range of violent collision scenarios, heavy elements in the models re-settled into distinct layers rather than remaining blended, contradicting the giant-impact explanation.
• The research team, led by Thomas Sandnes of Durham University, ran multiple scenarios on the DiRAC COSMA supercomputer using the open-source SWIFT code.
• The authors argue Jupiter’s interior likely developed through extended growth that mixed heavy and light materials over time, a view bolstered by evidence that Saturn has a similarly diffuse core.
• The study notes unresolved limits in modeling sub-particle mixing, so further work with different codes and long-term evolution models is needed to fully confirm the gradual-formation pathway and its implications for giant exoplanets.