Gas from Uranus reveals it has an icy centre

 

Image courtesy of JPL/NAS

Joel Kontinen

Carbon monoxide in Uranus's deep atmosphere in dictates that the planet contains more ice than rock, suggesting it formed more like Neptune than we thought.

It  seems that  Uranus has more water than scientist taught, but it is inside the planet.  Genesis seems to indicate that all planets had water in them.

Uranus appears to have far more water frozen as ice in its interior than astronomers thought, potentially settling a long-runnig mystery about whether it formed differently to its closest neighbour, Neptune.

Ice giants like Uranus and Neptune have thick, gassy atmospheres. This makes it hard to know what is inside the planets’ interiors or how they formed. Scientists can, however, measure gases in their atmospheres, which they can then link to processes and elements deeper inside.

Carbon monoxide in a planet’s atmosphere is often associated with its deepest parts being rich in water or ice, but while neighbouring Neptune has displayed abundant carbon monoxide suggestive of an ice-rich centre, Uranus has been lacking, which has led some astronomers to argue it instead has a rocky interior. If true, this would mean that Neptune and Uranus formed in very different ways and aren’t as similar as they appear

Source:

Alex Wilkins 2026 Gas from Uranus reveals it has an icy centre | New Scientist 19 June 

Fossils show Greenland was once ice-free – and could be again

Image courtesy of Ray Swi-hymn CC BY-SA 2.0- 

Joel Kontinen

Ancient plants, seeds and insects preserved beneath Greenland’s ice sheet reveal that it once melted completely, raising concerns about sea level rise if it happens again.

When was Greenland ice free? It did not happen today, but during the years when global warning was not thought about,

“Fossilised plants and insects extracted from beneath the centre of Greenland provide “smoking gun” evidence that the ice sheet has completely collapsed in the past – and could do so again.

The findings, taken from a sediment core drilled 30 years ago, reveal that the island was once an ice-free Arctic tundra complete with insects and plant.”

By Madeleine Cuff 2024 Fossils show Greenland was once ice-free – and could be again | New Scientist 5 August.

 

Ice on Mimas

 

Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science I

Joel Kontinen

Some of Saturn’s moon have ice before their surface. For example, “Mimas appears to have a vast global ocean underneath its icy shell, according to close measurements of its orbit. If other icy worlds have similar oceans”.

For certain evolutionists, this would mean life hospitable to life on the moon.

“Mimas is the smallest of Saturn’s seven major moons. It was long thought to be mostly composed of solid ice and rock, but in 2014 astronomers observed that its orbit around Saturn was unexpectedly wobbling, which could only be explained by either a rugby ball-shaped core or a liquid ocean.

Many astronomers rejected the ocean explanation because the friction needed to melt the ice should also have produced visible marks on Mimas’s surface. However, recent simulations have suggested that this ocean could exist without such marks.

To look for more clues, Valéry Lainey at the Paris Observatory in France and his colleagues analysed observations of Mimas’s orbit made by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. They found that its orbit around Saturn has drifted around 10 kilometres over 13 years.

According to the team’s calculations, this orbital drift could only have been produced by wobbles from an icy shel sliding over an ocean, or a core with a physically impossible pancake shape.”

Source:

By Alex Wilkins 2024. Saturn’s moon Mimas may be hiding a vast global ocean under its ice | New Scientist 7 February