Emily Chan
The planets Uranus and Neptune are the farthest away from us in the solar system, so scientists don’t really know much about these worlds.
However, they do know that Uranus and Neptune are rich in water, earning them the title of ice giants. And, in the 1980s, it was discovered that occasional massive storms occur on the two planets. The cause of these superstorms was unknown until recently.
The storms are extremely violent and unpredictable, but they don’t last long. Every few years, they appear and can be seen from Earth through a telescope.
All this information was gleaned after the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past them about four decades ago. A team of astronomers has proposed that methane might have something to do with how frequently the storms occur.
A storm is created when heat makes its way from a planet’s warm interior to its surface. On the planet’s surface, the heated gas starts to cool down, which can lead to turbulence and trigger storm formation.
However, Uranus and Neptune’s interiors are always warm, and their surfaces are always cool. So, according to that logic, the storms should be happening all the time.
In a new study, the team noted that methane is the third-most abundant molecule in the atmospheres of both worlds. The first and second are hydrogen and helium.
Methane usually just floats around in the atmosphere, but the researchers developed a three-dimensional model to show that the compound can significantly change heat transfer within the planets in certain situations.
Methane exists as a gas under normal circumstances, but in the upper regions of Uranus and Neptune’s icy atmospheres, methane might condense and form droplets that fall to lower altitudes. Once there, the droplets will reheat and rise again in a way that is similar to the water cycle on Earth.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
