Claim: Uranus and Neptune have oceans that are 5000 miles deep

Burkhard Militzer, a professor of Earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, has put forth a model that challenges older notions and draws on the principles of immiscibility – when substances refuse to mix, like oil and water.

Militzer believes that under the extreme conditions found in the deep layers of these planets, ingredients such as water (H₂O), methane (CH₄), and ammonia (NH₃) behave in unexpected ways.

“We now have, I would say, a good theory about why Uranus and Neptune have really different fields, and it’s very different from Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn,” Militzer explained. …

His findings also align with magnetic field readings collected by NASA’s Voyager 2 in the 1980s. Instead of a tidy, dipolar field like Earth’s, Uranus and Neptune show disorganized magnetic fields. …

The full study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.