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    Uranus and Neptune Might Be Rock Giants, Researchers Say
    Space

    Uranus and Neptune Might Be Rock Giants, Researchers Say

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    7 Comments

    1. rip1980 on

      So, the article concludes…we don’t know.

      Whatever happens, they’ll never dethrone the true giants of rock.

    3. RochellaGov2316 on

      When I was a kid, Uranus & Neptune were gas giants. Then when I was in university, they became ice giants. Now rock giants? Let’s get a couple of probes there to sort this all out.

    6. aldeayeah on

      Without getting into internal structure matters which tends to be pretty speculative, we do have some reliable numbers for the planets’ densities:

      Saturn 0.69 g/m³

      Uranus 1.27 g/cm³

      Jupiter 1.33 g/m³ (featuring some gnarly compressed matter states)

      Neptune 1.64 g/cm³

      Pluto 1.88 g/cm³

      Ceres 2.08 g/cm³

      Moon 3.34 g/cm³

      Mars 3.93 g/cm³

      Venus 5.24 g/cm³

      Mercury 5.43 g/cm³

      Earth 5.51 g/cm³ (yes, we’re the densest :D)

      This already suggested that gasiness-iciness-rockiness-metalness could be more of a spectrum than a truly categorical classification.