Posted on 03/27/2025 5:21:09 PM PDT by Red Badger
All four of the sun’s giant planets emit more energy than they receive from the sun.
Like the sun’s other giant worlds, Uranus (seen in this 1986 photo from the Voyager 2 spacecraft) radiates more energy than the sun gives it, though not nearly as strongly as its massive peers do.
JPL/NASA
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Uranus emits more energy than it gets from the sun, two new studies report — a discovery that contradicts findings from the venerable Voyager spacecraft.
When Voyager 2 sped past Uranus on January 24, 1986, the spacecraft detected no significant excess heat from the planet, making it seemingly unique among the sun’s giant worlds. However, new observations from space- and ground-based telescopes reveal that Uranus does in fact radiate more energy than sunlight provides, two research teams report in work submitted to arXiv.org in late February.
“Uranus is not as odd as we thought it was,” says planetary scientist Patrick Irwin of the University of Oxford, a coauthor on one of the studies.
Both teams say that Uranus, which takes 84 years to orbit the sun, reflects a bit more sunlight into space than Voyager had found. This means that the sun heats the planet less than previously thought, suggesting that Uranus must generate some heat to explain its temperature.
The upshot: “Uranus does indeed have internal heat,” says Liming Li, a planetary scientist at the University of Houston and coauthor on the other study. This heat is presumably left over from the planet’s birth.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
This reminds me of the time I farted extinguishing a house fire many tears ago, firemen shouldn’t eat gassy food while on duty.
Especially on a hazmat incident in a fully encapsulated suit!
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Some are on a roll.
What is an old thread, without an even older flatulimerick?
A drunken old codger named Bass,
Had testicles fashioned from brass.
When they tinkled together
They played “Stormy Weather”
Then lightning shot out of his ass.
(sorry mod, delet this)
The risk of it is even greater when the fire is next door to Taco Bell.
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