admin Uranus burst a bubble of gas 22,000 times the size of Earth in 1986, and researchers now believe it will happen again.
Two planetary scientists have discovered something they missed in previous analyzes that combed through NASA’s archives last year. There was a spike in Uranus’ magnetic field as the probe passed through a kind of magnetic bubble. The new findings, published last summer in Geophysical Research Letters, come as planetary scientists begin to pay attention to some of the most important unanswered questions in the field.
The Voyager 2 spacecraft captured this act, which was missed by researchers at the time, but was later confirmed.
In 1986, the Voyager 2 spacecraft passed Uranus and observed large bubbles of gas erupting from the planet’s atmosphere.
During its flyby, Voyager 2 detected a bright gas cloud erupting from Uranus’ southern hemisphere. The cloud was about 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) wide, stretched 27,000 kilometers (17,000 miles) across the planet’s surface, and had a volume about 22,000 times that of Earth.
Scientists believe the clouds were created by a sudden release of gas in the deep atmosphere of Uranus. The exact cause of this phenomenon is not fully understood, but it is thought to be related to the extreme tilt of the planet, which results in extreme seasonal variations.
The event was significant in that it gave scientists new insight into the dynamics of Uranus’ atmosphere and helped them better understand Uranus’ complex weather patterns.
