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Scientists discover massive energy imbalance on Saturn

A discovery by researchers at the University of Houston has revealed a massive energy imbalance on Saturn, shedding new light on planetary science and evolution and challenging existing climate models for the solar system's gas giants. The findings appear in the publication Nature Communications.

"This is the first time that a global energy imbalance on a seasonal scale has been observed on a gas giant," said Liming Li, physics professor in the UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. "Not only does this give us new insight into the formation and evolution of planets, but it also changes the way we should think about planetary and atmospheric science."

Using data from the Cassini probe mission, Xinyue Wang, a third-year doctoral student in NSM's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, found a significant and previously unknown seasonal energy imbalance on Saturn.

"Every planet gets…

No one has ever probed a particle more stringently than this.

In a new experiment, scientists measured a magnetic property of the electron more carefully than ever before, making the most precise measurement of any property of an elementary particle, ever. Known as the electron magnetic moment, it’s a measure of the strength of the magnetic field carried by the particle.

That property is predicted by the standard model of particle physics, the theory that describes particles and forces on a subatomic level. In fact, it’s the most precise prediction made by that theory. By comparing the new ultraprecise measurement and the prediction, scientists gave the theory one of its strictest tests yet. The new measurement agrees with the standard model’s prediction to about 1 part in a trillion, or 0.1 billionths of a percent, physicists report in the February 17 Physical Review Letters.

When a theory makes a prediction at…