Mysteries of Uranus may be explained by extreme space weather – study

This new study shows that a lot of the planet’s bizarre behaviour can be explained by the scale of the space weather event that occurred during that visit

Mysteries of Uranus may be explained by extreme space weather – study. Picture: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mysteries about Uranus which have puzzled scientists for decades may have been the result of unexpected data collected during an unusually powerful solar storm, research suggests.

In 1986, Nasa’s Voyager 2 flew by the seventh planet in the Solar System, providing scientists with their first and only glimpse of Uranus, and shaping their understanding of it since.