Name: 天王星為什麼會射出等離子體氣泡？ (Why Is Uranus Shooting Plasma Bubbles?)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T10:59:05.000Z
Duration: 4 min 24 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

Well, that's kind of an understatement. 

The seventh planet from the Sun is a real oddball in our solar system, and yet we've

only explored it once, back in the 1980s.

Scientists recently gave data from that mission a closer look,  and discovered the ice giant

Let's just address the elephant in the room: Uranus.

It's unfortunate that astronomer Johann Bode chose to name it after the Greek god

I know, all the other planets are named after Roman gods.

But if it were up to William Herschel, who discovered the planet in 1781, we'd be calling

it Georgium Sidus after King George III of England.

Since that's what I'll be calling it this whole episode, let's try and be mature about

Anyway, Uranus is shooting gas off into space.

The data from our mission to Uranus, Voyager 2, show in 1986 it ejected a mass of electrically

excited gas roughly 30 times wider than Earth's diameter.

See this ejection of gas was what's known as a plasmoid.

They occur when ions from the atmosphere follow magnetic field lines.

These lines on the side facing the sun experience intense magnetic radiation from the solar

The field lines can then whip around to the back of the planet and reconnect.

When that occurs, the ions in the pinched-off portion are sent hurtling into space.

Plasmoids aren't uncommon; in fact they've been spotted around several planets.

But we only just noticed this one from decades ago because of a few complicating factors.

First, like I said, there isn't a lot of data, just what we have from that Voyager

It and Venus are the only two planets that spin on their axes from east to west, opposite

of the rest of the planets in the solar system.

However, unlike any other planet, Uranus is sideways.

Its equator is almost perpendicular to its plane of orbit, possibly from getting smacked

Side note, pun intended: this gives Uranus some crazy seasons, with summer on one pole

consisting of about 21 straight years of daytime while the other pole experiences 21 years

On many planets that have them, magnetic fields more or less line up with their geographic

poles, which is why a compass works well enough on Earth.

But Uranus just can't stop being silly, and its magnetic axis is tilted at almost

And to make things just that much more complicated, it's also offset from the planet's center

All this makes for a very odd and twisted magnetic field with some unusual properties,

like it opens and closes to the solar wind daily.

So finding this plasmoid hidden in Voyager 2's magnetometer data required examining

it at a higher resolution than ever before.

Even in such fine detail, the plasmoid showed up as just a 60-second blip, meaning it was

(Well, I assume it'd be deadly if you tried to inhale what is probably mostly ionized

When you take a deep dive into Uranus, you discover it's such a strange and magical

I didn't even talk about how it possibly rains diamonds far under its gassy surface.

It's kind of surprising it was called “the most boring planet” after Voyager 2's

The scientists who spotted this plasmoid were looking for a reason to send a probe back

Hopefully this data and an upcoming convenient alignment of planets in the 2030s encourages

us to further plumb the depths of Uranus.

Another acceptable pronunciation of the planet's name is "yur-in-us."

Could I have called it that this whole episode?

We may not be going back to Uranus anytime soon, but we're very interested in Jupiter.

Specifically some of its moons that may have the right conditions for life.

Make sure to subscribe to Seeker for even more planetary updates and as always,

thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.