Tag Archives: Uranus

Humanity has successfully landed probes on Mars and Venus, two of the four rocky planets of the Solar System. While a mission to Mercury, being so close to the Sun and nearly as hot as Venus, is a tricky goal for future operations, if it has a rocky surface, human scientists will find a way to land there. Not all …

A new analysis of decades’ worth of observations has revealed that Uranus does indeed emit more heat than it receives from the rays of the Sun. This conclusion, arrived at by two independent teams of scientists, finally resolves a puzzle that first emerged when Voyager 2 cruised past the stinky planet all the way back in 1986. Those observations suggested …

KEY POINTS Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune each emit more energy than they receive from the Sun, meaning they have comparatively warm interiors. NASA’s Uranus flyby with Voyager 2 in 1986 found the planet colder than expected, which challenged ideas of how planets formed and evolved. However, with advanced computer modeling and a new look at old data, scientists think the …

Uranus is windy, too (Picture: Getty Images/iStockphoto) It’s getting hot and, er, gassy on Uranus. A deep, long probe of the bluish gas giant has revealed that it leaks far more heat than it receives from the Sun. The seventh planet in the solar system has an average temperature of just -195°C, unsurprising given it’s 1.8billion miles from the Sun. …

When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, the spacecraft detected a surprisingly low level of internal heat from the planet. Since then, scientists believed Uranus to be the odd one out in our solar system’s family of giant planets—the others being Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune—who all tend to emit more heat than they absorb from sunlight. Now, a new …

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. | Credit: NASA Scientists have found that Uranus is emitting its own internal heat — even more than it receives from sunlight — and this discovery contradicts observations of the distant gas giant made by NASA’s …

Scientists have found that Uranus is emitting its own internal heat — even more than it receives from sunlight — and this discovery contradicts observations of the distant gas giant made by NASA’s Voyager 2 probe nearly four decades ago. Scientists led by Xinyue Yang of the University of Houston analyzed decades of readings from spacecraft and computer models to …