Posted on 03/26/2013 3:29:15 PM PDT by LibWhacker
The other model (which I’d posted before, somewhere, maybe on FR) for the axial tip is the arrival, from the direction of one of the original poles, of the mass of liquid that makes up most of Uranus today; the previous mass of the planet might have been smaller, currently (it sez here) it is about 14 1/2 times the mass of Earth; its original density would have been higher. Arrival of this mass would have to have been sufficient to change the axis after some period of instability.
...or...
The arriving mass might have been what is now the rocky core, or (you guessed it) the secondary rocky core, producing the irregular mass distribution which has altered the axis of rotation until it’s nearly in the ecliptic. This is a bit cleaner, and more probable than the arrival of a long train of water of at planetary mass probably exceeding the mass of the Earth.
Interesting!
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