'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
It is a world wrapped in mystery - the seventh planet from the sun, Uranus, seen up close just once nearly four decades ago by a passing NASA probe and still warily guarding its secrets.
But new observations from a telescope located in New Mexico are providing a fuller understanding of its atmosphere, including the detection of a polar cyclone whose centre measures a quarter of Earth's diameter, swirling near its north pole.
Scientists were able to gaze more deeply into the atmosphere of Uranus - a planet classified as an ice giant, like its planetary neighbour Neptune - than ever before. The findings painted a picture of a planet more dynamic than previously known.
"While the general makeup of its atmosphere and interior are similar to Neptune - as far as we know - Uranus has some pretty unique features," said planetary scientist Alex Akins of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, lead author of the research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
"It spins on its side. And even then, its magnetic field is still misaligned with its rotational axis. The atmospheric circulation and internal heat release appear weaker than Neptune, but there are still a range of dynamical features and storms that have been observed," Akins added.
Uranus, blue-green in colour due to the methane contained in an atmosphere comprised mostly of hydrogen and helium, is the third-largest planet in our solar system. It has a diameter of about 31,500 miles (50,700 km) and is big enough to fit 63 Earths inside it. Uranus orbits the sun at a distance of about 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion km), almost 20 times further than Earth does. One orbit lasts 84 years.
Its unusual tilt makes Uranus appear to orbit the sun like a rolling ball.
The researchers used the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico to see below the clouds at the top of the atmosphere, finding circulating air at the North Pole that was warmer and drier, evidence of a strong cyclone. They were able to estimate the size of the storm's centre but not the entire cyclone's diameter, though it potentially could be wider than Earth.
The research confirmed that polar cyclones are present on every body in our solar system with a substantial atmosphere - all the planets but Mercury and even Saturn's moon Titan.
"Polar cyclones are regions of high winds moving in a direction determined by the planet's rotation - clockwise on Venus, Uranus and anti-clockwise for the rest - with differing air properties between the inside and out," Akins said.
"The way they form is different from planet to planet," Akins added. "On Earth, their strength is modulated by season due to the amount of sunlight. We aren't quite sure yet how they form on Uranus. It's different from other cyclones in the sense that it's generally longer-lived and most likely forms from a different balance of atmospheric processes, and therefore is a more characteristic (enduring) feature of the atmosphere. That is unlike hurricanes, which form, move and dissipate on relatively short time scales."
Most of the mass of Uranus is a dense fluid of icy materials - water, methane and ammonia. Uranus is surrounded by two sets of faint rings and orbited by 27 small moons. Its atmosphere is the coldest of any of the eight planets, including outermost Neptune.
Its only close encounter with a spacecraft came when Voyager 2 flew by in 1986.
"There are a lot of unknowns," Akins said. "How did it get tilted on its side? Is its interior really 'icier' than the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn)? Why do we see atmospheric banding features that aren't aligned with the measured wind speeds? Why is the pole so much drier than the equator? Are its satellites (moons) ocean worlds?"
(Reporting by Will Dunham, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
Ontario Provincial Police say 64 suspects are facing a combined 348 charges in connection with a series of child sexual exploitation investigations that spanned the province.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
A Saskatchewan boy who qualified for an international braille competition in Los Angeles next month hopes he can inspire change in his home province.
Canadians looking to grow their families with the assistance of sperm or egg donations should soon have more options for donors as the federal health agency does away with longstanding restrictions criticized as discriminatory.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.