Like a light bulb that switches between high and low power modes, Saturn pumps varying amounts of heat into space based on its seasons, a new analysis of data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveals.
One notable effect of this flow is turbulence in Saturn's atmosphere, which stirs up storms across the northern and southern hemispheres powerful enough to wrap around the planet, scientists reported in a paper published Tuesday (June 18) in the journal Nature Communications.
Such seasonal variations in the heat emitted by Saturn and other gas giants have not yet been included in models describing their climates and evolution, which assume that the planets emit heat equally in all directions and at a constant rate, says Liming Li, a physics professor at the university. From Houston, who discovered Saturn a decade ago They do not emit energy evenly He is a co-author of the new study, he previously told Space.com.
“We believe that our discovery of this seasonal energy imbalance necessitates a re-evaluation of these models and theories,” Xinyu Wang of the University of Houston in Texas, who led the new study, said in a new study. Final statement.
Astronomers have long known that Saturn returns to space with twice the energy it absorbs from the Sun. The extra energy comes from deep within Saturn, where residual heat from its birth raises temperatures to about 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit (8,300 degrees Celsius) — hotter than the surface of the Sun. Much of this internal heat is a byproduct of the planet slowly compressing due to its own gravity, and some of it may arise from friction caused by so much helium sinking toward the planet's core.
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When NASA's Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004, the gas giant was in the middle of austral summer and its south pole was facing the sun, while the northern hemisphere was shrouded in winter darkness. Equal amounts of sunlight heated both halves of the planet in 2009, when the equinox arrived. Cassini experienced three seasons in Saturn's northern hemisphere before the probe intentionally plunged into the gas giant's atmosphere in September 2017: spring, summer and winter, each lasting about seven Earth years.
While previous research led by Lee showed that the heat Saturn radiates corresponds to its seasons, the new study finds that these periodic changes are also due to changing amounts of sunlight absorbed as the gas giant oscillates widely between the closest and farthest points in its egg. – In the form of a 30-year orbit around the sun.
“Not only does this give us new insight into the formation and evolution of planets, it also changes the way we should think about planetary and atmospheric science,” Li said in the statement.
Originally published on Space.com website.
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