Uranus may have more in common with Earth than we thought, 40-year-old Voyager 2 probe data shows

Two side by side illustrations showing Uranus's spin and magnetic field with the Voyager 2 spacecraft flying nearby.

The Voyager 2 mission may have caught Uranus at a special time during which the ice giant's radiation belts were being supercharged with electrons accelerated by a similar process to what can drive geomagnetic storms on Earth.

This realization, resulting from placing old data from Voyager 2 under new scrutiny, could help explain several puzzling aspects of Uranus's magnetic envelope.