Scientists have a notion that the mushy blobs on Uranus are hosting a lot of gas. In more specific words, scientists have discovered that “mushballs,” large slushy hailstones made of ammonia and water, might be the cause behind a strange atmospheric phenomenon on Uranus, as per a press release about the research.
The mushballs, which are also observed on Neptune, might be hosting ammonia into the two planets’ atmosphere and hiding the gas from detection. The balls could be the secret behind why astronomers cannot find ammonia in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune – which is odd because it’s abundant with other gasses such as methane.
Mushballs transporting ammonia in atmosphere
However, observations from Jupiter indicate that mushballs there can usually transport ammonia deep into its atmosphere, and concealing it from detection with clouds.
“The Juno spacecraft has shown that in Jupiter, ammonia is present in abundance, but generally much deeper than expected — thanks to the formation of mushballs,” said planetary scientist Trisan Guillot. He presented a study of mushball research by his team at the Europlanet Science Congress 2021.
“I show that what we have learned at Jupiter can be applied to provide a plausible solution to this mystery at Uranus and Neptune,” he added.
Astronomers unfurling mysteries of space
Similarly, scientists got their closest look at an unusually shaped asteroid circling around our Sun in the asteroid belt that is located between Jupiter and Mars. The weird asteroid is named Kleopatra was recently snapped in the most detail to date with the help of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The image shows Kleopatra from different angles, revealing its two lobes linked by a center portion with an overall shape like a bone.
Besides, astronomers have carried out a study that aims to answer many intriguing questions surrounding brown dwarfs. A brown dwarf is an object that has a mass between that of a planet and a star. One of the questions the study tries to answer is where the mass limit lies. The question is the subject of debate because brown dwarfs are similar to low-mass stars.
