A Mysterious Glow Warms Rings of Uranus

[underpants]

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

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).

"We already know that the epsilon ring is a bit weird, because we don't see the smaller stuff," lead author and graduate student Edward Molter, who is also at the University of California, Berkeley, said in the same statement. "Something has been sweeping the smaller stuff out, or it's all glomming together. We just don't know. This is a step toward understanding [the rings'] composition and whether all of the rings came from the same source material or are different for each ring."

Another mystery is how Uranus and the other planets acquired their rings in the first place. Perhaps one or more moons got too close to the planet and broke apart, as is the probable fate of Mars' moon Phobos. Perhaps moons crashed into each other and broke into pieces, which could someday happen again at Jupiter, where the orbit of a newly found moon crosses the path of several other moons. Or perhaps the rings formed from captured asteroids that crumbled once they came under the influence of a planet's gravity. The rings could also have come from debris left over from the birth of the solar system, 4.5 billion years ago.

[Solly Mack]

1. Who told?

K/R

[Botany]

2. What planets do in the privacy of the milky way is fine by me.

I have heard that having warm rings in Uranus feels good.

[obamanut2012]

3. The jokes just write themselves!

[Shell_Seas]

4. I'm not mature enough for this post.