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Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. | Credit: NASA
Scientists have found that Uranus exudes its own inner warmth – even more than it receives from sunlight – and this discovery contradicts observations of the distant gas giants carried out almost four decades ago by NASA Voyager 2 -probe.
Scientists from Xinyue Yang from the University of Houston -based decades of readings from space vehicles and computer models to determine that Uranus gives 12.5% more internal heat than the amount of heat that it receives from the sun. However, this amount is still far less than the inner warmth of other outside solar system planets such as Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, which radiate 100% more warmth than from the sun.
The researchers behind this new study say that Uranus’ internal warmth could help recognize the origins of the curious, inclined world. “This means that it is still slowly losing the remaining heat from its early history, a key piece of the puzzle that helps us to understand its origins and how it has changed over time,” said Wang in an explanation.
In 1986 the legendary Voyager 2 -probe flew from Uranus, while he went out of the solar system into the interstellar room. Much of what scientists understand about the seventh planet of the sun comes from this Flyby, which found that Uranus does not reveal any significant inner warmth.
However, it turned out that we caught Uranus at a strange time, and some of the measured values collected could have been replaced by an increase in the sun weather, which occurred during his fly of the planet.
By reviewing a large series of archive data and the combination with computer models, the researchers now believe that the internal warmth emitted by Uranus could mean a completely different internal structure or evolutionary history for the planet that we thought we knew. It believed that Uranus was formed together with the rest of the solar system around 4.5 billion years ago, and NASA believes that it formed closer to the sun before moving to the outer solar system about 0.5 billion years later. However, this story is questioned by these new findings.
“From a scientific point of view, this study helps us to better understand Uranus and other huge planets,” said Wang in the explanation. The researchers also believe that this new understanding of the internal processes of Uranus NASA and other agencies could help plan missions on the distant planet.
In 2022, the National Academy of Sciences marked a mission concept that is known as an Uranus Orbiter and Sonde (UOP) as one of the planetary science missions for the highest priority for the next decade. But even before the massive budget uncertainty issued NASA and the science community according to President Donald Trump’s revision of the US government, scientists knew that such an ambitious and expensive mission would be difficult to move.
“There are many hurdles – political, financially, technically – so we are not an illusion,” said Leigh Fletcher, a planetary scientist at the University of Leicester in Great Britain, which was involved in the DEKADALERVICHENZEITSCHEBRESS, Space.com 2022, when the report was published. “We have about a decade to switch from a paper mission to hardware in starting cladding. There is no time to lose.”
A broad large recording of Uranus, which was recorded on February 6, 2023 by the James Webb Space Telescope, also shows six of the well -known 27 moons of the planet. | Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, J. Depasquale (STSCI)
Regardless of whether new research on Uranus strengthens support for such a mission, scientists already welcome these new results as groundbreaking. The co-author Lining Li said that the study on Uranus’ internal warmth not only helps us to better understand the distant, icy world, but could also help inform studies on similar processes here on earth, including our own changing climate.
“By uncovering how Uranus stores and loses the heat, we get valuable insights into the basic processes that shape planetary atmospheres, weather systems and climate systems,” said Li in the explanation. “These results help to expand our view of the atmospheric system of the earth and the challenges of climate change.”
A study of Uranus’ internal warmth was published in the magazine Geophysical Research Letters.
