Uranus' whopping 98-degree tilt may be due to a MOON migrating away from the planet and pulling it over on its side
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2022 6:35 pm
Uranus' whopping 98-degree tilt may be due to a MOON migrating away from the planet and pulling it over on its side, astronomers claim
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech ... lanet.html
The unusual attributes of ice giant Uranus have long puzzled scientists.
But now experts think they have an explanation for why the seventh planet from the sun has a rotational axis so skewed it may as well be lying down.
They say a mysterious moon migrating away from Uranus may have pulled the planet over onto its side, causing it to have a whopping tilt of 98 degrees from the orbital plane.
The researchers from the National Centre for Scientific Research in France claim it wouldn't even have needed to be a big moon to have this effect.
Although a larger satellite would more likely be to blame, something that is half the mass of our own satellite could have done it.
The strange tilt is not Uranus' only oddity. It also rotates clockwise, which is the opposite direction from most of the other planets in our Solar System.
Previous research has suggested this strange behavior might be because Uranus was hit by a massive object roughly twice the size of Earth billions of years ago, which caused the planet to tilt.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech ... lanet.html
The unusual attributes of ice giant Uranus have long puzzled scientists.
But now experts think they have an explanation for why the seventh planet from the sun has a rotational axis so skewed it may as well be lying down.
They say a mysterious moon migrating away from Uranus may have pulled the planet over onto its side, causing it to have a whopping tilt of 98 degrees from the orbital plane.
The researchers from the National Centre for Scientific Research in France claim it wouldn't even have needed to be a big moon to have this effect.
Although a larger satellite would more likely be to blame, something that is half the mass of our own satellite could have done it.
The strange tilt is not Uranus' only oddity. It also rotates clockwise, which is the opposite direction from most of the other planets in our Solar System.
Previous research has suggested this strange behavior might be because Uranus was hit by a massive object roughly twice the size of Earth billions of years ago, which caused the planet to tilt.