00:00The hidden truth of Uranus, an ice giant that's not so cold.
00:04Uranus, the ice giant and one of the most peculiar worlds in our solar system,
00:08has always been a challenge for science.
00:11It spins on its side, with one pole experiencing a 42-year summer
00:15and rotates in the opposite direction of almost all its neighbors.
00:20But, for decades, what truly baffled astronomers was its internal temperature.
00:24In 1986, the Voyager 2 probes flyby suggested an unusual finding.
00:31Uranus was surprisingly cold inside,
00:33while its giant companions Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune release much more heat than they receive from the Sun.
00:40A remnant of their violent formation four and a half billion years ago,
00:44Uranus appeared to emit almost nothing, barely the heat it absorbed from our star.
00:49This thermal blackout defied the fundamental theories of planetary evolution.
00:53To explain it, scientists considered extreme hypotheses,
00:57such as the planet being much older and having cooled off completely.
01:01Or even that the gigantic collision that knocked it onto its side
01:04might have blasted out all of its internal heat.
01:07As planetary scientist Amy Simon noted,
01:09all these projections hinged on that one single irrefutable data point from Voyager 2.
01:15It was a true cosmic cold case.
01:17However, a team of scientists from NASA and the University of Oxford
01:21decided to reopen the investigation.
01:24Armed with advanced computer models and motivated to unravel this enigma,
01:27they set out to re-evaluate the planet's thermal profile using decades of archived data.
01:33The team, led by Patrick Irwin, ran numerous simulations, focusing on a key concept.
01:39Uranus's total energy budget,
01:41the goal was to compare the energy it receives from the Sun
01:44versus the energy it releases back into space,
01:47both reflected and in the form of heat.
01:49To do this, they had to refine atmospheric models that integrated every known detail of the planet,
01:55from hazes to clouds, obtained by cutting-edge instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope.
02:00And that is how the discovery arrived.
02:03The new research, published in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
02:07confirmed a truth that had been hidden for nearly 40 years.
02:11Uranus does generate its own internal heat.
02:13The crucial finding was that Uranus releases approximately 15% more energy than it absorbs from the Sun.
02:20It is residual heat, a remnant of its formation, and a figure supported by an independent study.
02:26While it is still far less heat than its neighbor Neptune,
02:29which emits more than twice what it receives.
02:31This discovery corrects the solitary and confusing data point from Voyager.
02:352. This scientific breakthrough not only solves one of the most stubborn mysteries in our solar system,
02:42but is also of vital importance for the future of astronomy.
02:46By unraveling Uranus's thermal budget,
02:49scientists can better map the formation timeline of the giant planets.
02:52And crucially, given that the vast majority of exoplanets,
02:56discovered outside our solar system, are similar in size to Uranus.
03:00Understanding this ice giant allows us to better comprehend and characterize
03:04the thousands of distant worlds waiting to be explored.
03:08Uranus is no longer a simple cold outlier,
03:11but a key to unlocking the history of planet formation across the galaxy.
03:16Money Explore
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