We haven’t found any distant Earth’s as interstellar vacation spots just yet, but
astronomers have found a distant ice giant for those who prefer vacations in cold climates.
Hello everyone, Amy here for DNews.
There are three types of planets in our solar system: rocky, terrestrial planets like the
Earth; massive gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn; and ice giants like Neptune and Uranus.
All the giant planets are mostly made of hydrogen and helium, but the ice giants contain a significant
amount of methane ice, which accounts for their gorgeous blue hues.
And astronomers recently found the first candidate ice giant orbiting a distant star.
The exo-ice-giant in question is orbiting a star about two-thirds the mass of our Sun
in a binary system some 25,000 light-years from the Earth.
And it’s not quite a dead ringer for our own Uranus; it’s estimated to have about
four times the mass of our own ice giant.
But this exoplanet does have a Uranus-like orbit, and it’s this fact that’s making
astronomers draw strong comparisons between it and Uranus.
That it has a Uranus-like orbit suggests that it could have a Uranus-like composition.
Unfortunately that’s all conjecture for now; the planet is way too far away for us
to study its chemical composition.
But there’s still a lot this planet can tell us.
It might help shed some light on how our own Solar System developed.
Astronomers can’t totally explain how Neptune and Uranus ended up so far from the Sun.
Computer models of our Solar System’s history say that these ice giants should have formed
much closer to the Sun then migrated outwards somehow to their current positions, possibly
because of the massive gravitational pulls of Jupiter and Saturn.
Finding an exo-Uranus orbiting close to its parent star might support this migration idea.
This distant ice giant might be a glimpse into the life Uranus might have known had
that migration not occurred.
Are you guys as excited about this possible exo-Uranus as the science world is?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below or you can catch me on Twitter as @astVintageSpace.
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