Jupiter has no surface to stand on. The gas simply thickens with depth until it turns liquid.

What it means

A probe descending into Jupiter would never hit anything. The atmosphere gets denser and hotter until the distinction between gas and liquid stops meaning anything, and deeper still the hydrogen is squeezed hard enough to behave like a metal and conduct electricity. That layer of metallic hydrogen, churning as the planet spins, is what generates Jupiter's enormous magnetic field.

The claim comes from NASA.

Nearby in the collection

The facts either side of this one.

• NASAhard, 76 letters
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About as hard as this one

Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.

• RSChard, 72 letters
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