Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Monday April 06 2020, @08:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the obvious-jokes-go-here dept.

Mysteries of Uranus' oddities explained by Japanese astronomers:

The ice giant Uranus' unusual attributes have long puzzled scientists. All of the planets in our Solar System revolve around the Sun in the same direction and in the same plane, which astronomers believe is a vestige of how our Solar System formed from a spinning disc of gas and dust. Most of the planets in our Solar System also rotate in the same direction, with their poles orientated perpendicular to the plane the planets revolve in. However, uniquely among all the planets, Uranus' is tilted over about 98 degrees.

[...] How Uranus' unusual set of properties came to be has now been explained by a research team led by Professor Shigeru Ida from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology. Their study suggests that early in the history of our Solar System, Uranus was struck by a small icy planet - roughly 1-3 times the mass of the Earth - which tipped the young planet over, and left behind its idiosyncratic moon and ring system as a 'smoking gun'.

The team came to this conclusion while they were constructing a novel computer simulation of moon formation around icy planets. [...] There is strong evidence Earth's own single moon formed when a rocky Mars-sized body hit the early Earth almost 4.5 billion years ago. This idea explains a great deal about the Earth and its Moon's composition, and the way the Moon orbits Earth.

[...] As Professor Ida explains, 'This model is the first to explain the configuration of Uranus' moon system, and it may help explain the configurations of other icy planets in our Solar System such as Neptune. Beyond this, astronomers have now discovered thousands of planets around other stars, so-called exoplanets, and observations suggest that many of the newly discovered planets known as super-Earths in exoplanetary systems may consist largely of water ice and this model can also be applied to these planets.'

Shigeru Ida1, Shoji Ueta2, Takanori Sasaki3, Yuya Ishizawa3. Uranian satellite formation by evolution of a water vapour disk generated by a giant impact, Nature Astronomy, DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1049-8


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2020, @03:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2020, @03:46PM (#979980)

    indeed the fertility of the soil has a influence on the health of the growing coffee bean. fertile land can be expensive ...