Uranian Moons May Have Subsurface Oceans
Back in 1986, Voyager 2 visited the mysterious planet Uranus. Probes send back a prairie-schooner-full of data and some of it is analyzed and reanalyzed decades later. It is more than just, "Oh, look. More moons." Rechecking data from V'ger provided interesting results. Before going on, it is worth noting that Uranus defies the conventional cosmic evolution story. It is colder than Neptune, has an extreme axial tilt where it effectively rolls around the sun, rotates like Venus in a retrograde manner, has an offset magnetic field, and more. Illustration of Uranus and its five largest moons, NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Mike Yakovlev (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents) To date, twenty-nine moons have been discovered. Several of those are odd like their ringed host (rings discovered in 1977). Two of them are strong candidates to have oceans under their surfaces. This was determined by stress fractures caused by the planet they orbit. If correct, they could jo...