Could you survive on Jupiter?

Jupiter is a gas giant with no solid ground: what looks like a surface is the top of a cloud deck, and below it the hydrogen atmosphere simply gets denser continuously until it behaves like a liquid and then a metal. Anything falling in encounters winds above 100 metres per second, a gravity about 2.5 times Earth's at the cloud tops, and temperatures that climb rapidly with depth. The Galileo atmospheric probe, built specifically for this, transmitted for 58 minutes and reached about 22 bar and 150 °C before it stopped — and that was a hardened instrument package, not a person. There is no breathable gas at any level, and the radiation environment around Jupiter is itself lethal on a scale of hours near the inner moons. The honest answer is that the question has no depth at which it becomes survivable.

Physiology, not instruction. Every figure here is a population range under particular conditions, and individual variation is large — temperature, exertion, fitness and health move all of them substantially. Nothing on this page is medical advice.

Places

• How long could you survive in deep space? About fifteen seconds of consciousness, and roughly ninety seconds before the damage becomes irreversible.
• Could you survive on Mars? Unprotected, under two minutes. In a pressurised habitat, indefinitely — the limits become supply and radiation.
• How long can you survive in the death zone on Everest? Hours to a couple of days. Above about 8,000 metres the body deteriorates no matter what you do.
• How long can you survive adrift in the open ocean? In warm water with a raft, three to five days without drinking water — but immersion in cold water is measured in hours.
• How long could you survive on the Moon? About fifteen seconds of consciousness without a suit. With one, the record stay is 75 hours.
• How long could you survive in the Mariana Trench? Unprotected, no measurable time at all — the pressure is over a thousand times atmospheric. In a submersible, as long as the life support lasts.
• How long can you survive in Antarctica? Minutes to an hour unprotected in a winter storm — or indefinitely, since around a thousand people overwinter there every year.
• How long can you survive in the Sahara Desert? Around a day without water in summer daytime heat, and several days if you can stay in shade and move only at night.
• How long could you survive on Venus? Seconds. The surface is 465 °C at ninety-two times Earth's atmospheric pressure — the hardest place in the solar system to land on.
• How close to the Sun could you survive? Nothing solid survives contact — but a shielded spacecraft has flown within about 6 million kilometres of the surface.
• How long could you survive on a desert island? Fresh water decides it. With a spring or reliable rain, years; without, about three days.
• How long can you survive on the International Space Station? Indefinitely while it is resupplied — it has been continuously crewed since November 2000.
• How long can you survive in the Arctic? Hours unprotected in winter — but roughly four million people live above the Arctic Circle permanently.
• How long can you survive in a cave? With water and warmth, months — people have done it deliberately. Without light or a way out, hypothermia is the clock.