The two outermost planets of our Solar System, Uranus and Neptune, are more like Ice giants than true gas giants. They have never received a dedicated mission; only a fly-by from Voyager 2 back in the late 1980s. (NASA/Voyager 2)

Starts With A Bang Podcast #47 — Ice Giants At The Solar System’s Edge

What makes Uranus and Neptune-like worlds so fascinating? If you only knew.

What do we really know, and what mysteries are left to solve, about the outer worlds of our Solar System, and about the gas giant and ice giant worlds found throughout the Universe? Remarkably, if you had asked this same question 30 years ago, we would have had a quaint story about how planets form and why our Solar System has the planets it does, and we assumed that these rules would be extended to all solar systems in the galaxy and Universe. But with the deluge of exoplanet data, accompanied by better observations and simulations of our Solar System, that old story isn’t even the half of it.

Support and help make efforts like possible!