Daily Times

New research recently confirmed the long held belief in the scientific community that Uranus is indeed the smelliest planet in our solar system.

Speaking at the show As it Happens, planetary physics professor at the University of Oxford Patrick Irwin said that Uranus’ clouds contain hydrogen sulphide—the same gas that is released with flatulence and when eggs rotten.

Irwin also claimed that scientists had always believed that Uranus contained hydrogen sulphide but were unable to confirm it.

“We thought it [hydrogen sulphide] was probably there,” Irwin said.

“But we’ve never actually been able to absolutely say for certain that it really is until these new measurements we’ve just made, where we can actually see the fingerprints of hydrogen sulphide above the clouds.”

The amusing discovery, in fact, can be an essential find in understanding how planets formed in our solar system.

A key finding, Irwin claimed, is the compositional difference between Uranus and Neptune — the so-called ice giants that are farthest from the sun, and Jupiter and Saturn — the so-called gas giants that precede them.

Uranus — and presumably its neighbour Neptune, Irwin said — have more hydrogen sulphide than ammonia, while Jupiter and Saturn are the opposite.

This discovery suggests that it is highly likely that ice giants formed far away from the sun in a colder part of the solar nebula.

The scientist at Oxford also expressed the hope that we would once again send an orbiting satellite to Uranus that would collect similar data from very close to the planet.