Uranus is all over the place . It whirl weirdly , its magnetic field is off - center , and now we ’ve just found out it may open and close its magnetosphere every day , too .
The enquiry by Xin Cao and Carol Paty from the Georgia Institute of Technology was published in theJournal of Geophysical Research : Space Physics . Modeling the arrangement around Uranus , they found that its magnetosphere at times open up to allow solar wind through . This seemed to encounter almost every solar day , about every 17 Earth hours .
This first step and closing happens around Earth , and it ’s calledmagnetic reconnection – where the magnetized subject area bloodline of our magnetosphere and the solar wind align . This produces break of the day at its terminal , and it ’s probably doing the same at Uranus . But at Earth , this procedure is fairly irregular . At Uranus , it seems to be much more frequent .
“ As it is tumbling around , the magnetosphere ’s orientation is changing in all sorts of directions , ” Paty toldNew Scientist .
The planet isreally weirdalready . It rotates at almost a right - angle to the plane of its orbit around the Sun , something no other satellite does . This may have been make by a collision with an Earth - sized object long ago .
Its magnetic field of view is every bit eldritch . It ’s tipped by about 60 stage to the satellite ’s rotation , and is also countervail from the centre by about one - third of the planet ’s 25,360 - km ( 15,760 miles ) radius . On Earth , and indeed other satellite , our magnetic field rail line amount from jolly near our geographical pole – although magnetic north and south changes a number . Not so on Uranus .
Unfortunately , though , we ’ve bring very little selective information about Uranus . Most of our data come from the flyby of Voyager 2 in 1986 , our only spacecraft to ever visit this planet . NASA is currently considering marriage proposal to get off an orbiter to Uranus in the next decennary or two , which would greatly increase our understanding .
But for now , we ’ve got to rely on models like this latest study . This fundamentally modeled Uranus and its magnetosphere as a whole , and it closely matched the data pucker by Voyager 2 . It seems that the rotation of the satellite might be drive its changing magnetic battlefield . “ That ’s completely unlike from the Earth or any of the other planets , ” Paty toldGizmodo .
Finding out more about Uranus is important , because quite a few exoplanets seem to be somewhat similar , or at least like Neptune . methamphetamine hydrochloride giants like this seem to be fairly vulgar , so if we can get to the bottom of how the ones in our own Solar System piece of work , we might learn a bit more about planets elsewhere .
