BY PRAGYANSHARMA POLAVARAPU(VRS.SOMANCHI)
Uranus
is a giant gas planet nearly four times bigger than earth. Its radius is 24700
kilometers compared to earth’s radius of 6370 kilometers. It is at such a great
distance from earth that it can be seen only in telescopes. It orbits around the sun in 165 years. Its atmosphere is
99% composed of hydrogen and helium gases. It is called a gas giant. It is
mainly a sphere of super-cool gases of a few thousand miles radial depth with only an earth-sized rocky sphere at
center .To say it in another ,it has a
thick atmosphere spreading thousands miles straight down to the rocky ground at
the bottom with thick clouds of fine
crystals of ammonia , methane and water ices . Compared to it the earth’s
atmosphere is only about 300 miles thick and dense gases in earth’s atmosphere
exist only up to a height of about ten miles.
Upper
atmosphere of Uranus is unimaginably cold at about “minus 220 degrees” celsius.
Scientists say that stormy winds there may blow with speeds of 2000 kilometers
per hour! Areal hell! Scientists say
that there may be frequent stormy and unimaginably cold rains containing fine
ice crystals of ammonia, methane and water ices . They say that at
a height of approximately 7000 miles
above the rocky ground ,the element
carbon gets separated from its chemical
compounds and that the pure carbon solidifies as diamond under the
enormous pressure exerted by the gaseous
mass in upper layers.
The
diamond as we know is only a form of carbon with a
special arrangement of carbon atoms in a geometric three-dimentional
arrangement. Diamond is called an allotrope of carbon . (Another allotrope of
carbon is graphite). It is rather amusing and wonderful to know that real
diamonds , as we see on earth, but of far bigger size, rain down to the
rocky surface 7000 kilometers below as hail stones! These diamond hailstones
form when the super-cool Methane gas (CH3) solidifies
and dissociates into carbon and hydrogen . Thus billions
of diamonds big and small may frequently be raining down to the ground on
Uranus in the rainy, cloudy and stormy
atmosphere as hail stones .
If
only we are there in spite of the rain and cold and the suffocating poisonous gases ! The diamond is so important for us here on
planet earth as symbol of wealth,fashion
and glamour and symbol of high society ! Scientists say that such diamond
formation occurs on other “gas giant” planets also --( on the very cold distant
planets Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune) . The diamonds falling down on
the ground for hundreds of millions of years might perhaps had created a
diamond studded and diamond paved high ground and diamond hillocks
and diamond mountain ranges! What luck it would to mine diamonds there!
At center of the gas giant Uranus, only an
earth sized stony sphere exists like the
central nut inside a fruit. Above in the
dark skies there are clouds l of tiny crystals of ammonia, methane and water
ice upto a staggering height of about 15000 miles. It is a strange world but a
real real world!
Comments
Post a Comment