(ORDO NEWS) — Perhaps hidden oceans lurk around Uranus. New evidence suggests that one or two of the gas giant’s 27 known moons may contain liquid oceans beneath their solid rock-ice shell.
Possible culprits for plasma fouling around Uranus are Miranda and Ariel, one or both of which could be erupting from ocean plumes.
Data received from the Voyager 2 mission that flew past the planet. on its way to outer space almost 40 years ago – the only spacecraft to ever do so – a great argument for sending another probe to Uranus.
“We have been preparing this argument for several years. now that measurements of energetic particles and the electromagnetic field are important not only for understanding the space environment, but also for participating in larger planetary research,” says astronomer Ian Cohen of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
“Turns out. this may even be the case for data that is older than me. It just goes to show how valuable it can be to access the system and learn it first hand.”
Cohen and his team presented their findings on March 16 at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference and were also accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters .
When Voyager 2 flew by Uranus in 1986, its instrument for measuring low-energy charged particles detected something strange. : charged particles that have become trapped in certain regions of Uranus’ magnetosphere.
They were supposed to separate, but remained limited to the equator, near the orbits of Miranda and Ariel.
At the time, scientists believed the peculiar profile was indicative of an injection of energetic electrons from a source such as a substorm in Uranus’ magnetic field.
But upon closer inspection, Cohen and his colleagues found that the electrons did not have the characteristics expected from substorm injection.
This opened up a huge can of worms, because now the scientists are back to square one. one, trying to figure out where the electrons came from.
Of particular interest, they say, is the pitch angle of the electrons: the angle of their velocity vector with respect to the magnetic field would require electrons large enough to overcome the scattering and losses that would result from plasma waves in a planetary magnetosphere.
Without this kind of source, in the right place and at the right angle, the team determined through simulations that the pitch angle distribution of the electrons would become uniform within a few hours.
Digging into the Voyager 2 data, the team looked for such a source. Their simulations showed a clear and undeniable maximum in the space between Miranda and Ariel, indicating a source of energetic ions in this region.
As for what could generate these ions… 2 visited Uranus, scientists have made some progress in this regard.
Voyager 2 made a similar detection in space around Saturn, which years later showed up in Cassini data as being generated by ice geysers on what we now know as the oceanic moon Enceladus.
And another similar discovery led us to Jupiter’s oceanic moon Europa.
“It’s not uncommon for measurements of energetic particles to precede the discovery of an oceanic world,” Cohen says.
Which of the moons does it belong to – Miranda, the smallest of the five large moons of Uranus, or Ariel, the brightest – it’s kind of like 50/50 at the moment.
It could be both. Or both. Both moons show signs of relatively recent geological surface renewal, which may be consistent with an eruption of liquid material from within.
But for now, we only have one dataset. Planetary scientists are increasingly demanding a special mission to Uranus, possibly involving Neptune.
The planet has so many strange features that learning more about it can only be a truly exciting and rewarding experience.
The possibility of wet moons is just the icing on a stinky cake.
“The data is consistent with the very exciting potential of having an active oceanic moon there,” says Cohen. “We can always do more complete simulations, but until we have new data, conclusions will always be limited.”
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