After Cassini, A Mission To Icy Planets Full Of Diamond Rain?

Now that Cassini’s 13-year mission to Saturn has finally wrapped up, astronomers are already starting to think about where to send the next robotic orbiter.  

Among the proposals for a future mission are the “ice giants,” Uranus and Neptune. The two planets are good candidates because their far distance from Earth makes them especially hard to study. But, scientists are curious about one particularly interesting feature: the weather.

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Astronomers believe that inside the atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus it’s literally raining diamonds. Tim Dowling, a professor of planetary physics at the University of Louisville, joins Ira to describe what we could learn from the wacky weather of these icy planets if we were able to get a closer look at them.