Cymek said:
It’s assumed but not yet proven that gas giant have a rocky core of heavier elements.
Jupiters gravity has captured a number of comets which we’ve got photos of so its proven to have happened and most likely captures meteors and asteroids as well.
What would happen to them after they are captured would they break up and gravitate towards the core of the planet or be turned into dust type particles and become part of the atmosphere or perhaps a combination of both
Well put. Yes, even today nobody is certain what the cores of gas giants contain. Jupiter and Saturn have an inner core of “rocks” and an outer cored of “ices”. For Jupiter, the outer core has a radius about 0.12 to 0.13 times the radius of Jupiter. For Saturn, the inner core has a radius of about 0.1 and outer core about 0.2 times the radius of Saturn. For Uranus the rocky core is about 0.3 times the radius and for Neptune the rocky core could be anywhere from zero to 0.2 times the planet radius. My guess is that the rocks in the inner core are again differentiated as in the Earth with a centre of iron and an outer layer of silica, possibly surrounded by carbon.
> captures meteors and asteroids as well. What would happen to them after they are captured would they break up and gravitate towards the core of the planet or be turned into dust type particles and become part of the atmosphere or perhaps a combination of both.
From aerodynamic friction they would break up into dust. In addition, the interior of giant planets is extremely hot, the top of Jupiter’s mantle of metallic hydrogen and helium has a temperature somewhere between 5300 and 6800 Kelvin, similar for Saturn, so the dust is vapourised long before it reaches that depth. The material may eventually end up as part of the core, but it would take a very long time to get there atom by atom. I expect in the atmosphere and in the ocean of metallic hydrogen there would be a density gradient with higher concentrations of heavier elements at greater depths. The gradient within the ocean would depend on the presence or absence of fluid turbulence inside that ocean.
For Uranus and Neptune the temperatures are lower and the oceans are of supercritical salt water rather than metallic hydrogen, but the conclusions are the same. It is well known that the mantle-oceans of Neptune and Uranus are turbulent so would keep atoms of heavier elements suspended.
On the other hand, we know that the components of SL-9 reached depths well exceeding 100 km before breaking up. At a wild guess, based on the radius of the core of the waves generated, I would say that it penetrated somewhere between 450 and 700 km before breaking up.