re: NASA's Juno craft beams back stunning pics of Jupiter.

quote:

---

Scientists have generally thought that Jupiter either harbors a relatively compact core 1 to 10 times as massive as Earth or no core at all, said Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton, who's based at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

---

I rather doubt that Jupiter has no core. It would depend on where Jupiter's position was when the solar system formed but since its birth the planet has accreted mass by using its tremendous gravity to draw in other bodies. As with earth's formation, the heavier elements will have sunk to the core and as evidenced by Jupiter's strong magnetic field there's plenty of metal down there.

The cartoon below shows a lot of metallic hydrogen, and that's to be expected, but our solar system formed from the remains of third-generation stars that were rich in all of the heavy elements. Therefore, while there might not be a core of rock, the heavier metals such as iron and nickel are most likely under the metallic hydrogen.