Difference Between Earth and Uranus

Earth vs Uranus

We know a lot about our solar system or so we think, but this knowledge is really helpful in understanding about planets in this system, and their relationship with each other and the Sun, around which these planets revolve. Uranus is an important planet in our solar system that is bigger than earth, and farther from the Sun than earth. There are very few similarities between these distant cousins and in fact are very different from one another. Let us take a closer look at these differences.

Uranus was discovered by William Herschel in 1781. He wanted to name the planet George but the name was disapproved my most other scientist and finally the name Uranus was accepted which happens to be the name of the father of Saturn. It is the 7th farthest planet from the sun in our solar system and does not support life, unlike earth which is the only planet to support different life forms. If we talk about atmosphere, the constituent gases in earth are nitrogen and oxygen whereas it is hydrogen, methane and helium that dominate the atmosphere of Uranus. Uranus takes 84 earth years to complete one revolution around the sun. Though it is too far away from earth, one can see Uranus in night sky with naked eye. It looks like a pale star this way, but if you make use of a telescope, Uranus appears a small pale green disc in shape.

The diameter of Uranus is almost 4 times that of earth (51100km). It is 15 times heavier than earth. One fact that is not only unusual, but also makes Uranus markedly different from earth is the angle of its spin axis. This spin axis is 98 degrees to the perpendicular and makes the planet lie almost on its sides. This is a mesmerizing sight and no one really knows the reason behind this phenomenon. One notable difference between earth and Uranus lies in their magnetic fields. Voyager 2 found the magnetic field on Uranus to be around 100 times than that on earth. But owing to huge size of the planet, this magnetic field gets dispersed and its strength appears to be comparable to earth’s magnetic field. We have on earth, just one moon but Uranus has 15 moons of its own most of which were discovered by Voyager. The unique fact about Uranus is its rings that were discovered in 1977. There are 11 in total, 10 are dark, narrow and widely spaced and one ring is inside others, which is broad and diffuse.