Ice giants: Uranus and Neptune

Uranus

Uranus is tipped on its side!

Uranus’s diameter is 4.01 times that of Earth, and 63 Earths could fit inside it.

Uranus has only 14.54 times Earth’s mass because of its light materials.

Uranus’ ‘day’ (rotation on its axis) is 17 hours, 14.5 minutes.

Uranus' ‘year’ (time to revolve around the sun) is 84 Earth-years.

Uranus is 19.2 times further from the Sun than Earth, i.e. 19.2 astronomical units (AU) away.

Uranus' atmosphere is the coldest of the planets in our system (49 K [−224 °C, −371 °F]).

Uranus has strong winds of 560 mph.

Uranus has 13 fairly large moons and 22 tiny ones.

Uranus also has some thin rings. (Orbits of the moons and rings are tipped sidewise like the planet.)

Neptune:

Neptune’s diameter is about 3.88 times that of Earth's, and 58 Earths could fit inside it.

Neptune is only 17.15 times as massive as Earth.

Neptune is smaller, but heavier than Uranus.

Neptune’s day is 16' 6.5".

Neptune's year is 164.8 Earth-years.

Neptune is 30.07 AU from the Sun. 

Neptune is frigid: 55 K (−360 °F)—but not as cold as Uranus.

Neptune has the fastest sustained winds in the entire solar system. They can reach 1,300 mph.

Neptune has a long-lasting storm called the Great Dark Spot, approximately as wide as Earth!

Neptune has five thin rings.

Neptune has one large moon, Triton, and 13 tiny moons.

Triton orbits Neptune backwards (retrograde) and has the most circular orbit in the solar system. 

Discovery

Ancient people knew and named six of the eight planets in our solar system. But Uranus and Neptune are much further away and need powerful telescopes to be seen properly. The German-British astronomer William Herschel (1738–1822) discovered Uranus in 1781.

Astronomers tracked Uranus' motion. Isaac Newton (1642–1727) proposed his laws of motion and gravity. The French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier (1811–1877) observed that Uranus’ motion indicated that there must be a large unseen object’s gravity pulling Uranus slightly. He worked out the position and sent it to Johann Gottfried Galle (1812–1910) at the Berlin observatory. The same night that Galle received the letter, he aimed the observatory’s powerful telescope at the position. He found Neptune just 1° from Le Verrier’s prediction. This was an amazing triumph for Newton’s theories.

Icy

Uranus and Neptune are much smaller than Jupiter and Saturn but much bigger than Earth. Jupiter and Saturn, gas giants, comprised mainly made of hydrogen and helium. These atmospheres remain gaseous even at the ultra-cold temperatures of space. But while Uranus and Neptune are also mostly hydrogen and helium, they also contain water, methane, and ammonia. The last three substances freeze at the temperatures of deep space. Uranus and Neptune, called ice giants, comprised of methane, giving these planets attractive colors (i.e., pale greenish blue for Uranus; bright blue for Neptune).

Monuments to creation

Evolutionists say that the Sun and planets formed from a collapsing cloud of dust and gas. However, there would be very little material so far away from the Sun, and it would move very slowly. Some evolutionists say that Uranus and Neptune should not exist under their model. However, they obviously exist. The Bible reveals that God created them on Day 4 of Creation Week.

Uranus and especially Neptune give off more heat than they receive from the Sun. That is why Neptune is a bit warmer despite being further from the Sun. The heat also powers the strong winds on these planets. If the planets were billions of years old, the heat source would have run out long ago.

Back in 1984, evolutionists predicted that these planets would have very weak magnetic fields, believing that the planets were billions of years old. Thus, these planets could not sustain a strong field. The Bible teaches that God created the planets only about 6,000 years ago. Creationist physicist Dr Russell Humphreys proposed that God created planets with a field, which decayed over time. From this, he predicted that Uranus would have a field 100,000 times stronger than Evolutionists had predicted. When the Voyager 2 satellite measured Uranus’s field in 1986, it confirmed Dr Humphreys’ prediction.