According
to a new study performed by a team led by researchers at Durham
University's Institute for Computational Cosmology, many of Uranus'
abnormal properties were caused by a collision with a huge object -
about twice the size of Earth.
Using a high-powered
supercomputer, the team ran a never-before-done simulation of massive
collisions. This simulation showed that the primary suspect of a
collision with Uranus might have been a young protoplanet, primarily
made up of rock and ice.
Some of the effects of this collision
include the planet's extreme tilt and its abnormal magnetic field.
Unlike other planets in the solar system, the planet has an axial tilt
of
97.77°
. Furthermore, whenever Uranus completes a rotation, its magnetic field
tumbles around, opening and closing periodically as the magnetic field
lines disconnect and reconnect.
Furthermore, the simulation
demonstrates that when the collision occurred, some of the debris from
the impact may have formed a thin shell that continues to trap heat
radiating from the planet's core. This could provide a partial
explanation to Uranus' extremely cold outer atmosphere.
Other
oddities explained by the simulation include the formation of the
planet's moons and the rotation of its moons. The researchers believe
that the impact could have knocked rock and ice into the young planet's
orbit, debris that later could have formed some of Uranus' 27 moons.
This collision would have also changed the rotational speeds of any
moons orbiting the planet at the time.
Read the full study at:
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aac725/meta
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