REAL LIFE NEWS: URANUS SMELLS LIKE FARTS
by Hazed
If you’re planning a trip to Uranus, better take some nose plugs, because scientists have announced that the planet smells of eggy farts.
In a paper published last week in Nature, Patrick Irwin, a physics professor from the University of Oxford, says that Uranus’ atmosphere contains clouds of hydrogen sulfide. This is a gas that smells like rotten eggs. "If an unfortunate human were ever to descend through Uranus' clouds, they would be met with very unpleasant and odiferous conditions," he reported.
Of course, the smell is a relatively minor problem for visitors to the giant planet. The lack of oxygen and the extreme cold would need to be dealt with too. Prof Irwin added, "Suffocation and exposure in the negative 200 degrees Celsius atmosphere made of mostly hydrogen, helium, and methane would take its toll long before the smell."
This news about the smelly clouds comes from a team of researchers who analysed infrared light emitted from Uranus using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. This filters the sunlight reflected above the clouds in the planet’s atmosphere into spectral lines that describe the make-up of the gas molecules.
Co-author of the paper Leigh Fletcher, a senior research fellow at the University of Leicester, explained that this discovery shows the distinction between the ice giants (Uranus and Neptune) and the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn). Like Uranus, Neptune is presumed to contain hydrogen sulfide gas, whereas the gas giants’ upper clouds have ammonia and ammonia ice. This shows that the types of planets formed under different conditions.
"During our Solar System's formation the balance between nitrogen and sulphur (and hence ammonia and Uranus's newly-detected hydrogen sulfide) was determined by the temperature and location of planet's formation," he explained. So figuring out the chemical make-up of Uranus is key to understanding the structure of the Solar System and how it formed.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/23/uranus_hydrogen_sulfide_detected/
