Did Uranus get smacked so hard it spun sideways?
Uranus’s appears calm today, but it may still bear the scars of past trauma. (NASA/JPL/)Like other giant planets, Uranus has a set of rings and more than a dozen moons that make it resemble a miniature solar system unto itself. But unlike its king-sized neighbors (and the rest of the planets for that matter) the ice giant system turns on its side, rolling rather than spinning. Now, a new simulation of the planet’s early years buttresses a theory developed to explain the weird orientation by showing that it can produce the planet’s moons too.“This model is the first to explain the configuration of Uranus's moon system,” said Ida Shigeru, a planetary scientist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, in a press release.The bizarre planet demands an origin story unusual enough to match its oddball nature. Earth, Jupiter, and most of our cosmic crew spin “vertically” like tops, their...