Is it windy at all in space? Was it a physical object that knocked the planet to its side?
In: Physics
> Is it windy at all in space?
No it isn’t.
> Was it a physical object that knocked the planet to its side?
Yes, or rather multiple large objects that hit it, slowly turning it on it’s side.
Assuming that the collision happened after Uranus had already collected its gas atmosphere, I would imagine that a collision would blast all the gas into space — but much of it would get collected by gravity afterwards, returning to the planet. Presumably it would freeze into ice particles, and most of these would not have escape velocity so would eventually rain back down.
The force / heat of the impact would probably cause some to be lost permanently, and the rest to be retained. Anyone got any idea of the proportions, here?
Not sure about Uranus but the reason the earth is slightly tilted is because of a collision that happened when the solar system was still forming. Basically a planet roughly the size of Mars was on an unstable orbit and ended up crashing into the Earth. This event caused the tilt of the planet and the resulting dust and rock slowly gathered to form the moon.
I assume Uranus’ tilt is due to a similar collision
There’s no wind.
At some point during formation Uranus was likely involved in one or more apocalypse-grade collisions/mergers that skewed its rotational axis. This may also explain its weirdly off-center magnetic field and low core temperature.
Gas giants aren’t loose balls of gas, they get very dense as you go further in to them and it quickly becomes more like a liquid/solid than a gas. So anything big colliding with it like another planet will be able to properly hit it with a lot of force.
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