• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Uranus Has Experienced A Colossal Pounding

Uranus is a funny planet. And not just because it has a vaguely innuendo-y name in the English language. It is absolutely peculiar in its own right. One of its weirdest features is its tilt. Uranus rotates around the Sun on its side, with each pole facing the Sun for 42 years before switching. The cause of this weird tilt has long been suspected to be a collision, and a new study gives details of the impact.

As reported in the Astrophysical Journal, an international team used sophisticated simulations to reproduce what has been observed on the ice giant planet. After using 50 different impact scenarios, they believe that Uranus was hit by an object roughly twice as massive as Earth, most likely made of rock and ice. This happened around 4 billion years ago when the Solar System was still quite young.

The impact didn’t just influence the tilt. The researchers believe that it can also explain the surprisingly low temperature of the planet. The debris from the impactor might act as a thermal shield, trapping the heat from the planet's interior and making the outer atmosphere extremely cold.
“Uranus spins on its side, with its axis pointing almost at right angles to those of all the other planets in the Solar System," lead author Jacob Kegerreis, PhD researcher at Durham University, said in a statement. "This was almost certainly caused by a giant impact, but we know very little about how this actually happened and how else such a violent event affected the planet.

“Our findings confirm that the most likely outcome was that the young Uranus was involved in a cataclysmic collision with an object twice the mass of Earth, if not larger, knocking it on to its side and setting in process the events that helped create the planet we see today.”

Article http://www.iflscience.com/space/uranus-experienced-a-colossal-impact-that-knocked-it-on-its-side/
 

God Enel

Member
aYe7NMV_460s.jpg
 

Breakage

Member
Is it possible to talk to a girl about the planet Uranus without either feeling awkward or wanting to laugh?
 

Osukaa

Member
Damn.... I knew what to expect but still a bit disappointed....
Uranus is the tramp planet... i'd love to visit one day :p
 

womfalcs3

Banned
It's funny how so many words that start with "Ur-" have transformed into a "Yur-" in English. Uruguay, Uranus, etc.. They're pronounced "Oor-" by all other languages. Even Ukraine is pronounced Ookrania in other languages.
 
Last edited:

Greedings

Member
Uranus rotates around the Sun on its side, with each pole facing the Sun for 42 years before switching.

Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't understand this statement. If it's facing the sun with its pole, why would it ever switch sides?
 
Top Bottom