Every 45 minutes a gigawatt pulse of x-rays courses through the solar system.
Astronomers are accustomed to such things. Distant pulsars and black holes often bathe the galaxy with blasts of x-radiation. But this time the source isn't exotic and far away. It's right here in our own solar system.
"The pulses are coming from the north pole of Jupiter," says Randy Gladstone, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and leader of the team that made the discovery using NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory.
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