Scientists have directly observed a molecule in the planet’s deep atmosphere that confirms Uranus’s stench. That molecule is hydrogen sulfide, and it’s important for more reasons than just determining the planet’s scent.
“It adds another piece of information about the planets and how they form,” study author Patrick Irwin from the University of Oxford told Gizmodo. “Uranus and Neptune formed in a colder part of the solar nebula,” the early stage of our solar system when it was just our young sun and lots of dust, “than Jupiter and Saturn.”
Scientists have long assumed that cloud tops near the giant green planet’s surface contained hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, but that hypothesis has been based on inference rather than direct observations. Scientists figured these molecules were there based on an unexplained absence of certain wavelengths of light. It’s like guessing something’s identity based on a warped version of the shadow it casts without really looking at it.
The team peered deep into Uranus’s atmosphere, at and below the part we might call its “surface,” using the Gemini-North’s Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrometer in Hawaii. They report that they’ve directly detected the molecule at around 0.4-0.8 parts per million as ice in its cloud tops. They measured more hydrogen sulfide than ammonia, and also the exact concentration of hydrogen sulfide required to produce a rotten-egg fart smell.
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