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Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
Fri Jun 21, 2019, 09:01 PM Jun 2019

A Mysterious Glow Warms Rings of Uranus

By Elizabeth Howell 7 hours ago



A composite image of the atmosphere and rings of Uranus seen in thermal emission.
(Image: © UC Berkeley image by Edward Molter and Imke de Pater)


Some sort of a heat wave warms the rings of Uranus, even though the planet orbits far away from the sun.

New heat images of the planet, obtained by two telescopes in Chile, reveal the temperature of the rings for the first time: minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 195 degrees Celsius), or the boiling temperature of liquid nitrogen.

While that sounds cold by Earthly standards, consider that most of space is much colder, approaching a temperature at which atoms stop moving. This point is called absolute zero, which is roughly minus 460 F (minus 273 C).

And Uranus itself is located pretty far out in the solar system, where the planet receives only a fraction of the heat from the sun that the Earth receives. The ice giant orbits our star at an average distance of 19 astronomical units (AU), with each AU equivalent to the average distance from the Earth to the sun, or 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).

More:
https://www.space.com/uranus-rings-warm-glow.html

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A Mysterious Glow Warms Rings of Uranus (Original Post) Judi Lynn Jun 2019 OP
You get get that bleached now. Funtatlaguy Jun 2019 #1
How did you know? I told no one. Sneederbunk Jun 2019 #2
"temperature at which atoms stop moving" -- um, no. eppur_se_muova Jun 2019 #3
! flying rabbit Jun 2019 #4

eppur_se_muova

(36,227 posts)
3. "temperature at which atoms stop moving" -- um, no.
Sat Jun 22, 2019, 12:04 AM
Jun 2019
... a system at absolute zero still possesses quantum mechanical zero-point energy, the energy of its ground state at absolute zero. The kinetic energy of the ground state cannot be removed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_zero

Atoms at absolute zero possess the minimum amount of kinetic energy possible, but not zero.
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