via we-are-star-stuff - The greatest mysteries of the planets

Uranus

Planets are expected to radiate heat leftover inside them from their fiery formation process, but puzzlingly, Uranus radiates little or no heat into space. Perhaps the seventh planet’s heat got unleashed during some cosmic smash-up in the distant past. That collision could also have caused the planet’s strange sideways spin. Or maybe Uranus somehow self-insulates, keeping all its heat trapped inside.

Uranus also drags around with it the craggiest astronomical object known to man - a satellite called Miranda. This strange moon has deep canyons, scrapes, terraced layers and a cliff some 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) deep – the deepest in the solar system. Miranda’s geological mess may have formed from flowing ices in the moon’s interior, perhaps heated by gravitational squeezing from Uranus and other moons, oozing out onto the surface. Or, perhaps the moon was shattered several times and came back together, creating its jagged and mottled features.

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The Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs of 2012

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  • Voyager 1 Bids Farewell to the Solar SystemTalk of the Nation
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The Voyager 1 spacecraft will soon have a new territory to explore—interstellar space. Voyager chief scientist Ed Stone discusses whether the spacecraft will have a bumpy exit from the solar system, and the chances Voyager’s golden record may someday be intercepted by an advanced space-faring civilization. 

Source: NPR

Space Quick Facts

  1. Saturn’s rings are made up of particles of ice, dust and rock. Some particles are as small as grains of sand while others are much larger than skyscrapers.
  2. Jupiter is larger than 1,000 Earths.
  3. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a hurricane-like storm system that was first detected in the early 1600′s.
  4. Comet Hale-Bopp is putting out approximately 250 tons of gas and dust per second. This is about 50 times more than most comets produce.
  5. The Sun looks 1600 times fainter from Pluto than it does from the Earth.
  6. There is a supermassive black hole right in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy that is 4 million times the mass of the Sun.
  7. Halley’s Comet appears about every 76 years.
  8. The orbits of most asteroids lie partially between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
  9. Asteroids and comets are believed to be ancient remnants of the formation of our Solar System (More than 4 billion years ago!).
  10. Comets are bodies of ice, rock and organic compounds that can be several miles in diameter.

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Source: science-facts.com

“In the universe, plasma is the most common state of matter for ordinary matter… !” 1st spotted via Angeline Gragzin on Twitter More from Wikipedia  Plasmas are by far the most common phase of matter in the universe, both by mass and by volume. All the stars are made of plasma, and even the space between the stars is filled with a plasma, albeit a very sparse one. In our solar system, the planet Jupiter accounts for most of the non-plasma, only about 0.1% of the mass and 10−15% of the volume within the orbit of Pluto. Very small grains within a gaseous plasma will also pick up a net negative charge, so that they in turn may act like a very heavy negative ion component of the plasma (see dusty plasmas).
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“In the universe, plasma is the most common state of matter for ordinary matter… !” 1st spotted via Angeline Gragzin on Twitter

More from Wikipedia 

Plasmas are by far the most common phase of matter in the universe, both by mass and by volume. All the stars are made of plasma, and even the space between the stars is filled with a plasma, albeit a very sparse one. In our solar system, the planet Jupiter accounts for most of the non-plasma, only about 0.1% of the mass and 10−15% of the volume within the orbit of Pluto. Very small grains within a gaseous plasma will also pick up a net negative charge, so that they in turn may act like a very heavy negative ion component of the plasma (see dusty plasmas).

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