Uranus’ Strange History Is Making People Glad They’re On Earth

No matter how many centuries pass here on Earth, we’ll always be obsessed with space. Every galactic discovery leads to more questions than answers, and these questions take astronomical amounts of money and time to investigate. Because of this, many perplexing mysteries about our solar system alone have gone unanswered.

Until now. Due to the lack of funding for space research, even theories are considered scientific breakthroughs nowadays, and scientists may have just shed light on one of our solar system’s most beautiful and thought-provoking planets — Uranus. But what they’re theorizing implies something truly terrifying.

You’ve read books, watched movies, and witnessed conspiracy theorists ramble on about the mysteries of the solar system. When it comes to investigating one of space’s most puzzling phenomena, however, all we have to do is look to the sky.

Greg Quicke/Astrotours

Scientists have long debated the origin story of one of the solar system’s most perplexing planets, Uranus. We’ve only gotten a good look at the cyan-colored planet once, when the Voyager-2 probe snapped some dazzling photos of it back in 1986.

NASA/JPL

Since astronomers don’t have any concrete plans to revisit the planet, questions about Uranus’ strange formation abound. In order to investigate its history, we have to first look at the other planets. In this case, Mercury is the first piece of the puzzle.

NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Shape and size are essential when it comes to uncovering Uranus’ backstory. You probably wouldn’t notice Mercury in a solar system line-up because it’s the smallest planet there. It looks like a little dot…especially when compared to the largest planet in the line-up.

Jupiter takes the trophy for being our solar system’s biggest planet, and it does so easily: Jupiter’s mass is more than 300 times that of Earth, and its Great Red Spot is actually bigger in diameter than our planet. So where does that leave the other planets?

NASA/ESA/A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center)/M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley)

This is where it gets tricky. See, it’s easy enough to calculate the diameter and circumference of Mercury and Jupiter, but a planet like Uranus is a different story. It isn’t called the “sideways planet” for nothing.

Bettmann/Getty

Uranus is the third largest planet in the solar system, but this ranking changes when you measure mass. Unlike the other planets, Uranus looks very, very slightly like an egg. Its radius doesn’t correlate with its mass, making it an oddly-shaped planet with 27 moons. 

Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/W.W. Keck Observatory/NASA

That’s a key detail, here: Uranus isn’t a perfect sphere because it’s tilted more than 90 degrees relative to the plane of the solar system. How exactly this happened, scientists say, goes back to another part of the puzzle: Uranus’ composition.

NASA/JPL

NASA puts it like this: If Earth were a large apple, Uranus would be a basketball. Obviously, an apple is composed of different materials than a basketball. One of the two is edible, or in the case of Earth, habitable, and the other is not.

While Earth is a terrestrial planet, Uranus is an “ice giant,” or a giant planet composed of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Don’t let the word “ice” fool you, though. Uranus is primarily made up of gasses, specifically methane and ammonia. 

Corbis Historical/Getty

It has another identifying feature aside from its composition, and that’s its rings. Though Uranus’ rings aren’t as pronounced as Saturn’s, they’re still there, with dark inner rings and brightly colored outer rings — and they make Uranus’ tilt all the more striking.

NASA/JPL

Astronomers may have finally answered the age-old question about Uranus’ strange formation, and as it always seems to be when it comes to our solar system, the cataclysmic event may have happened approximately 3 to 4 billion years ago…and it was pretty violent. 

YourTubeTheme

According to their theory, Uranus suffered a violent collision shortly after it was born, one of epic proportions: The Earth-sized protoplanet that hit Uranus left it askew and supercharged its rotation, leaving it with an icy composition and 27 mysterious moons.

Jacob Kegerreis/Durham University

Luckily, this team of scientists had a plan to further demystify Uranus’ origins. They realized that Uranus’ secrets may be accessible through its 27 moons! After all, moons in the cold, dense part of the solar system must shed light on Uranus’ own strange formation…

We all know how our sole moon formed: Theia, a Mars-sized body, crashed into the proto-Earth, blasting materials into space that quickly solidified and garnered its own gravitational pull. Uranus’ story is far more complex. 

NASA/Neil A. Armstrong

According to those researchers, when that protoplanet smashed into Uranus, knocking it off its original axis, the material blasted into space was much more volatile than that from Earth. It was so volatile, in fact, that something inexpiable happened.

Cosmos/eyevine

Materials like water and ammonia, then blasted into space, remained gaseous just long enough to be absorbed by proto-Uranus, leaving it with a measly (known) 27 moons. This theory may sound like nonsense, but to scientists, it’s a huge breakthrough.

NASA/JPL

“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,” said the lead author of the study, Shigeru Ida. These icy planets are certainly filled with mysteries…

NASA/JPL

And there are plenty of people who will travel as far from home as possible to investigate these mysteries. Still, we’re content to stay right here on Earth, where one moon is enough to keep things interesting…at least until we colonize Mars, that is. 

The Martian/20th Century Fox