When Voyager 2 Flew past Uranus in 1986, the spacecraft detected a surprisingly low level of internal heat of the planet. Since then, scientists have believed that Uranus is the strange in the family of giant planets of our solar system – the others being Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune – all of which tend to emit more heat than they absorb from sunlight.
Now a new study suggests that scientists may have had the wrong idea About Voyager 2 data: Uranus has an internal heat source similar to its planetary siblings. For the study, published on Monday in Geophysical research lettersResearchers have analyzed decades of archival data available on the Ice Giant, finding that Uranus emits 12.5% more internal heat than it absorbs from the sun.
This is still much less hot than the other three giant planets, which broadcast more than 100% of the solar energy they receive. However, the study proves that Uranus does not move away from the general understanding of scientists about how giant planets form and evolves.
To achieve this conclusion, the researchers analyzed data on Uranus’ global energy balance through one full orbit of the Sun, which lasts 84 years. The team took these observational data and combined it with computing models, finding large seasonal swings driven by the wild changes of the planet in a sunlight exhibition. The new findings are in line with an earlier paper on Uranus’ energy balance, published in Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in May.
This said, nor a study offers a clear answer to why Uranus’s internal heat is much lower than the other gas and ice giants. Uranus may have had a “different internal structure or evolutionary history compared to the other giant planets,” the researchers noticed in Statement. The study also found that Uranus’s energy levels change according to its 20-year seasons. These fluctuations, along with the planet’s hot budget, “provide observational boundaries that can be used to develop theories of planetary formation for giant planets,” the study states.
Thus, the paper both answers and raises questions about Uranus, which the researchers cite as a good reason for future NASA missions to explore the ice planet further.
“Discovering how Uranus stores and loses heat, we gain valuable insights into the fundamental processes that form planetary atmospheres, weather systems and climate systems,” said Liming Li, a studio and physicist at the University of Houston, in the release. “These findings help broaden our perspective on the Earth’s atmospheric system and the challenges of climate change.”
