593058 external_news 1498667976 1498678568 A new Georgia Tech study on Uranus' quirky magnetosphere has the benefit of good timing. The research from Carol Paty, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and EAS graduate student Xin Cao, relied on 1986 Voyager 2 flyby data. Paty and Cao discovered a magnetosphere that opens and closes at intervals, allowing solar winds to bombard the planet at times. NASA is currently considering new missions that could include revisiting Uranus. That may be why this study is generating a lot of interest among science media outlets, including Smithsonian.com, New Scientist, the British website Metro, and IFL Science. 

 

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