You will be tempted to say you catch the PUN when you are told that Uranus smells like fart, but the thing is its no pun and it has nothing to do with the human body. Or booty if you prefer that.
According to a study that has just been released, the planet which has become the butt of every joke, surprisingly or not, now smells like the human fart. This, according to astronomers is because the upper part of the planet is covered with hydrogen sulfide which at best smells like the human waste gas and at worst, like a rotten egg.
The finding which was published in the journal Nature Astronomy was done by researchers from the University of Oxford who have discovered using the Gemini North Telescope that hydrogen sulfide is what covers the top part of the planet.
The unfortunate thing for those of us that would have loved to confirm this is that, even if you get to go to the planet, it will be impossible for you to be able to smell it because according to the scientists that have discovered it is mostly hydrogen, helium, and methane. What this means is that it can easily suffocate one.
Uranus Smells Like Fart: Here are more facts about the planet:
1. Discovery of the planet
Uranus is a rather modern planet as it was only discovered in 1781 by German-born British astronomer William Herschel. The reason why it was only this recently that it was discovered is that the planet is too dim to be seen by earlier people because it is too dim. After he discovered it, William Herschel thought it was a star or a comet, until it was later proven that it was actually a planet due to the fact that it follows planetary orbit.
Unlike other planets, it is the sole planet that has not been named after a Roman god. Before the name was reached for the naming of the planet, there were other names that were proposed and rejected such as Hypercronius (above Saturn) and Georgium Sidus (The Georgian Planet).
2. Modern Planet
Following its discovery of the planet which has been named after a Greek god, it became the first planet to be discovered in modern times. Before this period, six planets had already been discovered as they were the ones that humans could sight without needing the most sophisticated tools out there.
That said since Uranus was discovered, other planets that joined it as the modern planets are Neptune and Pluto. Just as Uranus, these planets are also way too hidden for the naked eyes to sight.
3. Temperature of Uranus
Uranus is a planet that is very far from the sun and because of that, as you will expect, the temperature is rather cold, and it can maintain a particular season for close to 20 years. It has a temperature that ranges from -153 degrees C to -218 degrees C in the deeper troposphere.
With that in mind, the planet is the coldest in the solar system as it is 19 times farther from the sun than the earth. What is rather more interesting about the plant is that it is one of the gas planets as it doesn’t have a solid surface. This is the same as other planets; Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.
Another thing is that the wind speed of the planet can get up to 900 km per hour (almost 560 miles per hour).
4. Number of Moons
While the earth has just a single moon, there are planets that have more and there are those that have none. For example, mercury and Venus have no moon, while Mars has 2. Uranus, on the other hand, has 27 moons around itself and the most popular ones are Titania, Oberon, Umbriel, Ariel, Miranda, and Sycorax which are the five largest ones while the Cupid, Francisco, Ferdinand, Margeret, and Trinculo are the smallest. Among the moons are some that are full while others are half. You can get to see Titania using the telescope from the earth.
The interesting thing is that it is not the planet with most moons. Jupiter has 69 moons, Saturn has 62 moons, Neptune has 14 moons, and Pluto has 5 moons.
Another thing with Uranus is that it has 13 rings. The earth has no rings, but it is unknown if it has ever had a ring in the past.
5. The rotation of Uranus
The smelly planet goes around the sun every 84 earth years. As regards turning its axis, the planet revolves around its axis once in every 17 hours and 14 minutes. Another interesting thing is that its rotation is in a retrograde direction, which makes it moving in a different direction when compared to earth and many other planets.
Human Journey to Uranus
Humans have been able to make it to the moon as far back as July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong first walked on the lunar surface. Apart from this, there have been various other space missions and there are other spacecraft landings on planets such as Venus, Mars, Saturn, and other space bodies.
It will surprise you to know that the distance between earth and Uranus changes constantly. Because of that, they can get closer and wider apart. According to scientists, the closest that the two planets have ever gotten to each other is 1.6 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers). When Earth and Uranus get to be in opposite directions of the sun, they get to go at the farthest point from each other. When it happens, the distance between the two planets is 3.15 billion km.
See Also: 5 Planets Humans Can Colonize- In Search For Earth Away From Earth
As pointed out, there has been no human that has landed on the planet, but there was a spacecraft that has made it beyond the planet. NASA’s Voyager 2 which was launched in August 1977 happens to be the only spacecraft that has flown by Uranus to date when it was heading for the outer solar system. It got to get close to the cold ice planet in less than a decade as it approached the planet on January 24, 1986. At the moment, NASA is trying to see the potentials of a trip to the planet or Neptune.
