AustinUranus’s magnetic field tilts 59 degrees from its spin axis.
Neptune’s tilts 47 degrees against Earth’s 11, the study says.
Simulations reproduce Voyager 2’s fields when conductivity rises with depth, which splitting water into ions could cause.
“In some stretches the tilt swings by tens of degrees within decades,” said Chi Yan, the study’s lead author.
Researchers are analysing James Webb Space Telescope images of the planets’ auroras to read today’s fields.
How each outlet framed it
- Phys.org
- attributes the disordered Uranus and Neptune fields to shifting electrical conductivity deep in the interior, not just convection geometry
Sources: Phys.org