WHY ARE X-RAYS COMING FROM URANUS?
SCIENTISTS HAVE MADE A BREAKTHROUGH IN A STUDY OF THE ICY GIANT
Uranus has long been thought of as an oddball planet. It’s one of two ice giants in the outer Solar System, the other being Neptune, and it’s one of two planets to rotate from east to west, the other being Venus. Most strangely, its spin axis is titled by 98 degrees, which means it rotates on its side. And now scientists have discovered something else that’s just a little weird.
Data collected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has allowed astronomers to detect X-rays from the planet for the very first time. For the most part there’s a simple explanation for these signals: researchers say one of the sources is reflected emissions from the Sun. But note the word ‘one’ in that statement, because there also appears to be other sources. What they could be is a mystery, and academics are keen to get to the bottom of them.
Arriving at this point has taken some time. The scientists involved in the latest research have only recently studied observations
