this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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I'm confused. The title suggests it's hotter than anticipated, but the articles contents suggest that it's not as hot as it should be. It's emitting less heat than the other giant planets. Not more.
Now I understand that this means it's losing heat at a slower rate, but wouldn't it likely have to be colder than expected to begin with in order to it be losing it at a slower rate than the others?
The headline is horrible (haven't read the actual article). As I undrstamd the topic, Uranus radiates more heat than previously measured, but still less than our models suggest it should.
is it some sort of fucking law that headlines have to be dogshit?
Seems so. In the few media I'm slightly more familiar with, the headlines are written by someone else with the aim of drawing in more readers and the authors of the articles themselves have no control over it.
The article is confusingly worded but the new finding is that Uranus DOES emit more heat than it absorbs from the Sun (unlike previous measurements suggested), but still emits less excess heat than the other gas giants - it's both "hotter than it should be" yet "cooler than expected" compared to similar planets.