Why could a person never stand on Jupiter?

Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system by a long way. It is more than twice as massive as all the other planets put together, and it is so bright in the night sky that people have known about it since ancient times, without any telescope at all.

Yet for all its size, you could never stand on it. Jupiter is a gas giant, made mostly of hydrogen and helium, with a very thick atmosphere and no solid surface. Scientists are still not sure what lies deep inside: perhaps a solid core, or perhaps a thick, extremely hot soup.

The planet is wrapped in stripes of swirling cloud, and it is a stormy place. Its most famous feature, the Great Red Spot, is a storm bigger than the Earth that has been raging for more than three hundred years.

Jupiter also spins fast. A day there lasts only about ten hours, although a year, one trip round the Sun, takes almost twelve Earth years. It has faint rings that are very hard to see, and dozens of moons, far more than our single Moon.