Question

Astronomers discover a planet orbiting around another star. The star is very much like our Sun, and the planet is almost a twin to Jupiter. The planet has the same mass as Jupiter, is the same distance from its star as Jupiter is from our Sun (5.2 AU), has the same orbital period (12 years), is the same temperature, and has the same density and chemical composition as Jupiter. However, when we take a close up picture of the planet, we find that its clouds are not lined up in East/West bands like Jupiter. Instead the clouds appear to randomly swirl around. Propose a hypothesis to explain why this planet's clouds would not be organized into East/West bands like we see on Jupiter

Answer 1

Jupiter or any other gaseous planet is essentially a sphere of fluid spinning on its axis. And the repeated tidal tugging of, say, an orbiting moon can cause the flowing fluid to organize itself in a particular way. There are 69 known moons of Jupiter which are revolving around the planet.This explains the bands of lined up clouds.

The twin planet will not form the similar bands most probably because it does not possess as many moons as Jupiter to get influenced by the tidal forces required to form bands.