Uranus and Neptune tagged posts

Researchers use plastics to better understand what happens inside planets. Giant planets like Uranus and Neptune may contain much less free hydrogen than previously assumed. Researchers from the German Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) drove shock waves through two different types of plastic to reach the same temperatures and pressures present inside such planets, and observed the behavior using ultra-strong X-ray laser pulses...

Artist’s concept of NASA’s Voyager spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Are we alone? Forty years ago, NASA rocket scientists sought to answer this question by launching the Voyager spacecraft, twin unmanned spaceships that would travel further than any human-made object in history. When Voyager 1 and 2 launched about two weeks apart in 1977 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, scientists knew little about the outer planets in our solar system, and could hardly imagine the scope of their upcoming space odyssey.

“None of us knew, when we launched 40 years ago, that anything would still be working, and continuing on this pioneering journey,” said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone...

By conducting experiments at the Linac Coherent Light Source — one of the world’s most powerful X-ray lasers — an international team of researchers led by HZDR physicist Dr. Dominik Kraus was able to demonstrate that hydrocarbon compounds split into carbon and hydrogen inside ice giants such as Neptune, shown here. The carbon turns into a “diamond shower.” Credit: Greg Stewart / SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

SLAC’s X-ray laser and Matter in Extreme Conditions instrument allow researchers to examine the exotic precipitation in real-time as it materializes in the laboratory. In an experiment designed to mimic the conditions deep inside the icy giant planets of our solar system, scientists were able to observe “diamond rain” for the first time as it formed in high-pressure conditions...