A Story of the Planet Venus
Looking For The Planet Venus Prior to 1200 BC
by John M. Collins Sarnia, Ont., Canada 2021
Appendix 10
Venus & Uranus?
Exploring A Possible Connection Between These
Two Planets In Millenia Gone By
Contents
Introduction
Uranus Details
Impact ? Yes ? No ? Maybe ??
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency Data
Speculation on the Actions of Venus
'Cataclysmic' Collision Shaped Uranus' Evolution - July 2, 2018
A Big Space Crash Likely Made Uranus Lopsided - Dec. 21, 2018
Origins of Uranus' oddities explained by Japanese astronomers - Apr. 6, 2020
Introduction
In my work entitled "Venus; The Late-Arriving Planet", I developed the premise that the Venus Comet, in the period 11,000 to 1200 BCE, orbited the Sun on a 7-year, highly elliptical cycle. This cycle was also identified at least as far back as 50,000 years BP (Before Present which is considered to be 1950 CE).(1) Being on the same Solar System plane as the Sun and the other planets, the Venus Comet crossed their orbits, except Mercury, twice every seven years.
The Venus Comet obit of seven year intervals, as seen in the NOAA data of ice freezing temperatures, is counted by individual varves in the ice. It is real! There is one for each yearly passage of the Earth around the Sun, which we call an Earth Year. In the period when the Earth had damaging encounters with the Comet 49 years apart, an Earth-Bound\ writer of that period stated that there were 360 days in a year. The peoples in those times rejoiced in the perfection of 12 months of 30 days each, and considered it a sacred pattern set by their gods.
The Comet had various interactions with the Earth at intervals of 42, 49, 56, 63, 70, 77, 84 and 91 Earth years at different times. I noted that all of these intervals were multiples of 7. These Earth Years matched the 360 day year that was considered the "perfect year". When our orbit was changed in 687 BCE, our current year of 365.24+ days came into being. The Babylonians figured out the new calendar shortly afterwards.
This raised the questions of "What kept the Venus Comet on that 7-year orbit for so long?" and "Was there a reason for such an elongated orbit?"
My interest was peaked when I realised that the orbit of Uranus was being given as 84.0205 Earth years of 365.24+ days, a value almost exactly divisible by 7. However, using a standardised Earth year of the old 360 days would give Uranus an orbit equal to 85.24515 Earth years.This raised doubts that there was a link between the Venus Comet orbit and that of Uranus.
My approach was to look for details of Uranus, a planet of which I sadly lacked much knowledge. My surprise discovery was how little was known by the professionals! It has been examined by Earth telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope. The only space exploration was the singular pass of the Voyager 2 space craft on its way to outer space, and the readings it took as it went by. Uranus' remoteness seems to have prevented earlier cultures from seeing it. No mentions by those earlier cultures even hint at its existence in fact or myth.
Three recent articles regarding Uranus are attached to this document.
Uranus Details - from various articles
- Uranus rotates around the Sun in a counter-clockwise direction. This "Uranian Year" is said to be 84 standardised Earth years long. The term "standardised" seems to imply "nominal", reflecting the difficulty in being very precise in measuring the start / finish locations of Uranus amongst the stars in the sky after 84 years. Different and better telescopes are used. Have there been relative movements of the target? Interference by "dust"clouds?
Uranus "lies on its side" with its polar axis 80 below the plane of rotation of our solar system. This means that the poles of its rotation alternately point towards the Sun on a standardised 42 year cycle.
- A "Uranian day", that is a single revolution on its polar axis, takes 84 standardised Earth years as well. It is identical to its "year" and as a result, the day and night of the "Uranian Day" are each 42 standardised Earth years long. Calculating the spacial movements of a point on the surface of Uranus relative to the Sun is a complicated task.
Orbit of Uranus using more exact current values
84.0205 Earth Years of 365.242374 days per year = 30,687.847 Earth Days
The very precise number of days per year used is the value of the March Equinox year that our calendar adjustments try to match.
An Earth Day, meaning one revolution of the Earth on its polar axis, is considered to be an unchanging value. The number of revolutions (days) changes as its orbit gets moved nearer to or further from the Sun.
Orbit of the Venus Comet
7 Earth Years of 360 days per year = 2520 Earth Days
12 Orbits of the Venus Comet = 30,240 Earth Days
- Uranus is considered an "ice giant" with a stone and water ice core. The gases surrounding that core include hydrogen, helium, methane, ammonia and even hydrogen sulphide. Its surface temperature is very cold at -216 ℃ .
- Regardless of its overall size, Uranus is, by mass, a "lightweight" among the major planets, having a small core and encircled by those light gases mentioned.
- Uranus does show evidence of a possible impact in one side of it. Such an impact could have caused the tilt of the planet from the solar system norm.
- It is believed to have had a collision with another planet-sized object "billions of years ago", perhaps during "creation" of the solar system. The articles below describe that object as "twice the size of Earth". NASA thinks it was "Earth sized" which accords with Venus as that object. Nobody provides proof, or even a rational, for suggesting the size mentioned. Its all a guess!
A Caution to Researchers: Much of the "information" on Uranus that is being put out, is based on other writers' assumptions and imaginations embedded into computer simulations. The readers and viewers neglect to demand support for those positions, and unfortunately, give a lot more credence to the simulations than they warrant. For example, the statements in two of the following articles saying that Uranus was damaged in a collision with an object twice the size of the Earth some 4 billion years ago. This is conjecture. It seems to have been chosen simply as one of a set of trial data to be tested in their computer program. The pictures below show some of the results of the simulations that were reported.
Impact? Yes? No? Maybe??
This thinking led me to question whether the impactor that struck Uranus, could have been the planet Venus? Or .... Could Venus have been ejected from Uranus by the impact of a third body? The current actual size of Venus is a little less than the size of Earth. If it was the impacter of Uranus, it could have been much bigger and then was broken in the impact. The rotation of Venus is clockwise on its rotational axis and counter-clockwise on its rotation around the Sun. Its orbit around the Sun today is essentially one Venus day long.
Our data indicate that the Venus Comet was interacting with the Earth by 50,000 BCE(2). Where it was prior to that date is unknown, as are any interactions with other planets. The orbit of the Venus Comet prior to 1200 BCE, seems to have been an ellipse, with the Sun and perhaps Uranus as its foci. Alternatively the second focal point may have simply been the location where the Venus Comet's escaping inertia was exceeded by the Sun's gravitational pull. These hypothesizes assume that Uranus was always "way out there". In a "wild thought", could it have been inside the orbit of Jupiter, and the debris of the Asteroid Belt relates to the collision by/of Venus with it?
The Venus Comet was stated to be fiery, in early mentions, a situation totally unexpected in the vacuum of space. These statements were later found to have been made only when describing it during close encounters within Earth's atmosphere. The "fiery" description was not the view seen across millions of kilometres of space by Earthlings. This suggests that the fiery aspect was the combustion of a "fuel" by Earth's oxygenated atmosphere after ignition by superheated debris in the comet portion. The composition of that fuel is unknown. As recently viewed from a robot spacecraft, the planet Venus is considered "very hot" but not "fiery".
NOAA Data
Working with the orbit cycles in the NOAA data in the 43,000 BP period (about 41,000 BCE) showed an interval of a 56 year cycle between distinct drops in the freezing temperature of the icecap surface. That same source of data in the period between temperature peaks in 49,922 BP and 45,321 BP, a span of 4601 years, showed a cycle of 63 years. These cycles are consistent with my findings(3) that the Venus Comet completed a single orbit between the Sun and Uranus in 7 Earth years as shown for the 13,000 to 3000 YA data.
Depending on the size of the Earth's orbit, its recorded interactions with the Venus Comet in that data provide a very plausible reason for the ancients to develop astronomy, and become capable in tracing that moving object in their skies.
Fear of the Future is a very powerful incentive for action.
Speculation on the Actions of Venus
The above details plus the three articles that follow, led my mind into looking for connections and trying to make sense of it all. The following paragraphs are a wide-open attempt to do that. I have tried to remain within the bounds of "physical possibility" but have gone outside of the bounds of "likelihood". I do not have a date for all this except that it is pre-50,000 years BP. Needless to say, these ramblings must be called "speculation"; and I make no apologies for them.
I begin with a series of questions to stimulate my thinking:
Venus specific details
1. Why did Venus have a large comet attached to it long ago?
2. Why was that comet carrying all the debris that was reported?
3. Why is the current Venus so hot while the other planets are cold?
4. Why was the Venus Comet described as "fiery" as lately as 2000 BCE?
5. What was the source of that heat? Read 'Why is the Venus Comet Described as "Fiery"?' in The Venus Story
6. Why did the Venus Comet have a 7 year orbit? It was known before 50,000 YA and ceased about 3200 YA.
7. Are the Platinum/Iridium analyses described in Appendix 5 indicative of the composition of Venus or just its cometary debris? If the latter, from where did it come?
8. ???
Venus and Uranus similar details
11. Why do the current planet Venus and the planet Uranus rotate on their axes in the clockwise direction rather than counter clockwise like the other planets? Did they both get inverted on their axes of rotation?
12. Why do the current Venus and Uranus both make only one rotation on their respective axes in the course of one rotation around the Sun? Other planets make multiple rotations.
13. Why was the orbit of the Venus Comet nearly synchronous with the orbit of Uranus?
14. Why does the planet Uranus have its axis of rotation nearly in line with the plane of rotation of our solar system?
I am considering the possibility that the proto-planet of Venus, entered our solar system as a much larger entity with a core of mostly metal-based ores. Our Earth is considered to have such a core containing ores of iron and the heavier minerals. I begin by assuming that the proto-planet Venus ran into the planet Uranus, penetrating it deeply, but with a glancing blow to its core. Both planets broke up to some degree.
The core of the proto-planet Venus became very hot, maybe even liquified, before flying on past the Uranus core, on a path that took it back into space. It trailed a huge cloud of debris and gases that would contain solid chunks of rocks of different sorts plus vapours and frozen liquids. These could be from either or both of the two planets. See Appendix 5 - Venus & Platinum
In the length of time that the two planets were entangled, the course of the Venus portion was altered. It would match Uranus at this point in its orbit but was also drawn toward the Sun. This would result in it attaining an elliptical path around and between the Sun and beyond the circling Uranus.
Uranus appears to have had its polar attitude changed so that its axis of rotation became in-line with the solar system plane of rotation rather than at 90 degrees to it. This action implies a huge transfer of energy between Uranus and Venus. Such energy transfers could well result in temperatures that would liquify the planet cores. It might also generate the electrical energy of the "Thunderbolts" that flew between Venus and other planets.
The Uranus core pieces, likely heavy too, retained a gravitational attraction, clustered together again and stayed within the gassy outer atmosphere. Lighter material such as water vapour, condensed and froze as a part of the core of Uranus. Having a much more substantial mass to start with, it was not jostled around as much as Venus, and likely retained its orbit.
The net result was that the two planets appeared to have synchronised orbits that coincided every seven years. This continued until the Venus Comet was disturbed leading up to its 1250 BCE orbit. In that one it had a severe encounter with the Earth that we now call the " Mycenaean Civilisation Collapse " or "The Late Bronze Age Collapse". (See Appendix 1 - Dated Events 1250 BCE). This resulted in the Venus Comet losing the seven year orbit pattern with Uranus. About 66 years later in 1184 BCE, it encountered the planet Mars as viewed from Troy, and was permanently diverted off-course. In the years that followed, its orbit was altered progressively. About 800 BCE, the author thinks that it came close to the planet Jupiter, and was stripped of its Comet cloud. By about 700 BCE, it had approached its current place in the heavens.
If my view that the Venus Comet was synchronous with the motion of the planet Uranus is correct, then the Comet had to be meeting Uranus regularly at 7-year intervals, and for over 10,000 Earth years! At those times, the Comet would loop around Uranus under the gravitational influence of that planet, and head towards the Sun. Both Comet and planet would have to retain their orbits exactly, in order to keep meeting. This could only occur if the larger orbit of Uranus was an exact multiple of the smaller orbit of the Venus Comet.
But that is not the situation that we have today. The Comet actions were based on proven years of 360 Earth Days. We know that in 687 BCE, after the Comet had ceased to exist, a Mars and Earth encounter altered our Earth orbit to its current 365.24+ days. The experts however say that the orbit of Uranus is "approximately 84 Earth Years". One source gives 84.0205 Earth Years(4).
As an answer to this puzzle, this author suggests that problem lies in carrying out the difficult task of actually measuring the length of time involved in the Uranus orbit. While he does not know all the details, he understands that it requires an observer to very accurately note the position of Uranus relative to a remote star that is so far away that it does not seem to move in perhaps 100 years or more. That note, describing the Uranus position in detail, must be retained. Then 84 years later another viewer looking at Uranus through a much better telescope, judges when it has reached that same position in the sky as described in that old note. The difference between the two dates gives the length of a single Uranus orbit in Earth Years of the current length.
The accuracy of the observations is quite dependent on the development of the telescopes and other features available to the observers. An observation made in 2000 CE would be compared to ones made by earlier telescopes in 1916 CE, and in 1832 CE. Our experience in measuring the orbit length of Uranus is quite limited. In other assessments of time in this Venus Story, the author has used a "clock" based on "Earth Days". It utilises much larger numbers but they are constant in actual length as they are based on an unchanging amount of time, the Earth's polar axis rotation. Variations in the length of the time for an Earth orbit (a year) on difference orbits around the Sun, are not involved.
Herschel found Uranus in 1781. Lexell determined its orbit in 1787.
2020-08-26 Further to the above ramblings and speculations, the author examined some Venus details with the following thoughts arising.
Present Venus planet orbiting speed 126,108 km/hr.
At 24 hr/day and 360 Earth Days per year = 1089.5 x 106 km/yr.
Assuming that the orbiting speed of Venus today is the velocity of the Venus Comet. No loss in Venus inertia.
In the seven year orbiting period of the Comet, distance travelled would be
1089.5 x 7 = 7626.5 x 106 km. Half that distance (one way) = 3813 x 106 km.
Uranus average distance from Sun 2872 x 106 km.
This would leave (3813 - 2872) x 106 km = 941 x 106 km as total distance travelled by the Venus Comet while making the U-turns at the Sun and at the orbit of Uranus.
Venus currently orbits the sun at an average distance of 108 x 106 km. Half of an orbit is 54 x 106 km.
Do these numbers look reasonable? or supportive of Venus having had a collision with Uranus?
Neptune distance from Sun 2794 x 106 km.
All distances in millions of km
For Venus Comet to travel to Neptune = 2 x Sun to Neptune orbit + half of it orbit at Sun
= 2 x 2794 + 0.5 x 108 = 5642
Length of Comet orbit = 7626.5. Remainder of beyond Neptune orbit 1984.5 . This assumes that the Comet retains its speed and momentum somehow.
Need to get the case where the out-bound Comet is progressively slowed by the attraction of the Sun until it stops and reverses its motion. As it returns, it picks up speed.
Must be able to maintain repeatability of the multiple returns over 50,000 Earth years.
'Cataclysmic' collision shaped Uranus' evolution
July 2, 2018, Durham University © The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Research led by Durham University, UK, confirms that a massive object roughly twice the size of Earth hit Uranus about 4 billion years ago and caused the planet's unusual tilt. The collision could explain Uranus' freezing temperatures.
The collision with Uranus of a massive object twice the size of Earth that caused the planet's unusual spin, from a high-resolution simulation using over ten million particles, coloured by their internal energy.
Credit: Jacob Kegerreis/Durham University
Uranus was hit by a massive object roughly twice the size of Earth that caused the planet to tilt and could explain its freezing temperatures, according to new research.
Astronomers at Durham University, UK, led an international team of experts to investigate how Uranus came to be tilted on its side and what consequences a giant impact would have had on the planet's evolution.
The team ran the first high-resolution computer simulations of different massive collisions with the ice giant to try to work out how the planet evolved.
The research confirms a previous study which said that Uranus' tilted position was caused by a collision with a massive object—most likely a young proto-planet made of rock and ice—during the formation of the solar system about 4 billion years ago.
The simulations also suggested that debris from the impactor could form a thin shell near the edge of the planet's ice layer and trap the heat emanating from Uranus' core. The trapping of this internal heat could in part help explain Uranus' extremely cold temperature of the planet's outer atmosphere (-216 degrees Celsius, -357 degrees Fahrenheit), the researchers said.
Lead author Jacob Kegerreis, Ph.D. researcher in Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology, said: "Uranus spins on its side, with its axis pointing almost at right angles to those of all the other planets in the solar system. This was almost certainly caused by a giant impact, but we know very little about how this actually happened and how else such a violent event affected the planet.
"We ran more than 50 different impact scenarios using a high-powered super computer to see if we could recreate the conditions that shaped the planet's evolution."
"Our findings confirm that the most likely outcome was that the young Uranus was involved in a cataclysmic collision with an object twice the mass of Earth, if not larger, knocking it on to its side and setting in process the events that helped create the planet we see today."
There has been a question mark over how Uranus managed to retain its atmosphere when a violent collision might have been expected to send it hurtling into space.
A 2004 infrared composite image of the two hemispheres of Uranus obtained with Keck Telescope adaptive optics.
Credit: Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/W.W. Keck Observatory.
According to the simulations, this can most likely be explained by the impact object striking a grazing blow on the planet. The collision was strong enough to affect Uranus' tilt, but the planet was able to retain the majority of its atmosphere.
The research could also help explain the formation of Uranus' rings and moons, with the simulations suggesting the impact could jettison rock and ice into orbit around the planet. This rock and ice could have then clumped together to form the planet's inner satellites and perhaps altered the rotation of any pre-existing moons already orbiting Uranus.
The simulations show that the impact could have created molten ice and lopsided lumps of rock inside the planet. This could help explain Uranus' tilted and off-centre magnetic field.
Uranus is similar to the most common type of exoplanets—planets found outside of our solar system—and the researchers hope their findings will help explain how these planets evolved and understand more about their chemical composition.
Explore further: Study of Uranus suggests some of its moons are on a collision course
More information: Astrophysical Journal (2018). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aac725
Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal
Provided by: Durham University
A big space crash likely made Uranus lopsided
PhysOrg extract December 21, 2018 by Seth Borenstein ©
This image made from video provided by Durham University astronomy researcher Jacob Kegerreis shows a computer simulation generated by the open-source code SWIFT that depicts an object crashing into the planet Uranus. Kegerreis says the detailed simulations show that the collision and reshaping of Uranus 3 billion to 4 billion years ago likely caused the massive planet to tilt about 90 degrees on its side.
(Jacob A. Kegerreis/Durham University via AP)
Uranus is a lopsided oddity, the only planet to spin on its side. Scientists now think they know how it got that way: It was pushed over by a rock at least twice as big as Earth. Detailed computer simulations show that an enormous rock crashed into the seventh planet from the sun, said Durham University astronomy researcher Jacob Kegerreis, who presented his analysis at a large earth and space science conference this month.
Uranus is unique in the solar system. The massive planet tilts about 90 degrees on its side, as do its five largest moons. Its magnetic field is also lopsided and doesn't go out the poles like ours does, said NASA chief scientist Jim Green. It also is the only planet that doesn't have its interior heat escape from the core. It has rings like Saturn, albeit faint ones. "It's very strange," said Carnegie Institution planetary scientist Scott Sheppard, who wasn't part of the research.
The computer simulations show that the collision and reshaping of Uranus—maybe enveloping some or all of the rock that hit it—happened in a matter of hours, Kegerreis said. He produced an animation showing the violent crash and its aftermath.
It's also possible that the big object that knocked over Uranus is still lurking in the solar system too far for us to see, said Green. It would explain some of the orbits of the planet and fit with a theory that a missing planet X is circling the sun well beyond Pluto, he said.
Green said it's possible that a lot of smaller space rocks—the size of Pluto—pushed Uranus over, but Kegerreis' research and Sheppard point to a single huge unknown suspect. Green said a single impact "is the right thinking."
The collision happened 3 billion to 4 billion years ago, likely before the larger moons of Uranus formed. Instead there was a disk of stuff that would eventually come together to form moons. And when that happened, Uranus' odd tilt acted like a gravity tidal force pushing those five large moons to the same tilt, Kegerreis said.
It also would have created an icy shell that kept Uranus' inner heat locked in, Kegerreis said. (Uranus' surface is minus 357 degrees, or minus 216 Celsius.) Ice is key with Uranus and its neighbour Neptune. A little more than a decade ago, NASA reclassified those two planets as "ice giants," no longer lumping them with the other large planets of the solar system, the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter.
Pluto, which is tiny, farther from the sun and not even officially a planet anymore, has been explored more than Uranus and Neptune. They only got brief flybys by Voyager 2, the space probe that entered interstellar space last month. Uranus and Neptune "are definitely the least understood planets," Sheppard said.
But that may change. A robotic probe to one or both of those planets was high up on the last wish-list from top planetary scientists and likely will be at or near the top of the next list.
Uranus was named for the Greek god of the sky. Its name often generates juvenile humour when it is wrongly pronounced like a body part. (It's correctly pronounced YUR’-uh-nus.) "No one laughs when I say Uranus," NASA's Green said. "They have to mispronounce it to get the chuckles."
Explore further: 'Cataclysmic' collision shaped Uranus' evolution. See previous article above.
APRIL 6, 2020
Origins of Uranus' oddities explained by Japanese astronomers
Uranus is uniquely tipped over among the planets in our Solar System. Uranus' moons and rings are also orientated this way, suggesting they formed during a cataclysmic impact which tipped it over early in its history. Credit: Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/W.W. Keck Observatory/NASA
The ice giant Uranus' unusual attributes have long puzzled scientists. All of the planets in the 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 also rotate in the same direction, with their poles orientated perpendicular to the plane in which the planets revolve. However, uniquely among all the planets, Uranus is tilted at about 98 degrees.
Instead of thinking about the reality of stars spread in all directions and at various distances from the Earth, it is easier to understand by envisioning the celestial sphere. To picture what the celestial sphere is, look up at the night sky and imagine that all of the stars you see are painted on the inside of a sphere surrounding the solar system. Stars then seem to rise and set as the Earth moves relative to this "sphere." As Uranus rotates and orbits the sun, it keeps its poles aimed at fixed points with relation to this sphere, so it appears to roll around and wobble from an Earth observer's perspective. Uranus also has a ring system like Saturn's, and a slew of 27 moons that orbit around its equator; thus, they are also tipped relative to the plane of the ecliptic. The origins of Uranus' unusual set of properties 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 one to three 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 constructing a novel computer simulation of moon formation around icy planets. Most of the planets in the solar system have moons of different sizes, orbits, compositions and other properties, which scientists believe can help explain how they formed. There is strong evidence that 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 the moon's composition, and the way the moon orbits Earth.
Uranian spin axis is tilted from its 'orbit normal' by 98 degrees. Its satellite orbit normals coincide with the spin axis. Credit: ELSI
Scientists expect such massive collisions were more common in the early solar system; indeed, they are part of the story of how all planets are thought to form. But Uranus must have experienced impacts that were very different from Earth simply because Uranus formed so much farther from the sun. Since the Earth formed closer to the sun, where the environment was hotter, it is mostly made of what scientists call 'non-volatile' elements, meaning they don't form gases at normal Earth-surface pressures and temperatures; they are made of rock. In contrast, the outermost planets are largely composed of volatile elements like water and ammonia. Even though these are gases or liquids under Earth-surface temperatures and pressures, at vast distances from the sun, they are frozen into solid ice.
According to professor Ida and his colleagues' study, giant impacts on distant icy planets would be completely different from those involving rocky planets, such as the impact scientists believe formed Earth's moon. Because water ice forms at low temperatures, the impact debris from Uranus and its icy impactor would have mostly vaporized during the collision. This may have also been true for the rocky material involved in Earth's moon-forming impact, but in contrast, this rocky material had a very high condensation temperature, meaning it solidified quickly, and thus Earth's moon was able to collect a significant amount of the debris created by the collision due to its own gravity.
In the case of Uranus, a large, icy impactor was able to tilt the planet, give it a rapid rotation period (Uranus' day is presently about 17 hours, even faster than Earth's), and the leftover material from the collision remained gaseous longer. The largest mass body, which would become Uranus, then collected most of the leftovers, and thus, Uranus' moons are small. To be precise, the ratio of Uranus' mass to Uranus' moons' masses is greater than the ratio of Earth's mass to its moon by a factor of more than 100. Ida and colleagues' model beautifully reproduces the current configuration of Uranus' satellites.
Professor Ida says, "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."
Explore further 'Cataclysmic' collision shaped Uranus' evolution
More information: Shigeru Ida et al, Uranian satellite formation by evolution of a water vapour disk generated by a giant impact, Nature Astronomy (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-1049-8
Journal information: Nature Astronomy
Provided by Tokyo Institute of Technology
(1) Alley, R.B.. 2004. “GISP2 Ice Core Temperature and Accumulation Data.” IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series #2004-013. NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.
(2) Ibid
(3) See Appendix 4 - Reading the Ice
(4) Munsell, Kirk (14 May 2007). "NASA: Solar System Exploration: Planets: Uranus: Facts & Figures". NASA. Retrieved for Wikipedia 13 August 2007.