365NEWSX
365NEWSX
Subscribe

Welcome

Uranus' whopping 98-degree tilt may be due to a moon migrating away from the planet - Daily Mail

Uranus' whopping 98-degree tilt may be due to a moon migrating away from the planet - Daily Mail

Uranus' whopping 98-degree tilt may be due to a moon migrating away from the planet - Daily Mail
Oct 03, 2022 1 min, 35 secs

The unusual attributes of ice giant Uranus have long puzzled scientists. .

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. .

Previous research has suggested this strange behaviour 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.

Theory: The unusual attributes of ice giant Uranus have long puzzled scientists.

This led scientists to try to find other explanations, such as a wobble that could have been introduced by a giant ring system or a giant moon early in the Solar System's history. .

Then they took a look at Saturn and found that its current tilt of 26.7 degrees could be the result of the rapid outward migration of its largest moon, Titan. .

They found that a hypothetical moon with a minimum mass of around half that of Earth's moon could tilt Uranus towards 90 degrees if it migrated by more than 10 times the radius of Uranus at a rate higher than 6 centimetres per year. 

However, a larger moon comparable in size to Jupiter's Ganymede would be more likely to produce the tilt and spin we see in Uranus today. 

A larger moon comparable in size to Jupiter's Ganymede (pictured top left) would be more likely to produce the tilt and spin we see in Uranus today

They say that at a tilt of about 80 degrees, this hypothetical moon could have become destabilised, triggering a chaotic phase for the spin axis that ended when it ultimately collided with Uranus, effectively 'fossilising' the planet's axial tilt and spin. 

'To our knowledge, this is the first time that a single mechanism is able to both tilt Uranus and fossilise its spin axis in its final state without invoking a giant impact or other external phenomena. 

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

RECENT NEWS

SUBSCRIBE

Get monthly updates and free resources.

CONNECT WITH US

© Copyright 2024 365NEWSX - All RIGHTS RESERVED