Uranus "Hit by Rock twice the size of Earth" (AP)

You're all taking for granted that this happened. Well just look at the article and two words smack you in the face.
1. They "think" this is what happened. Think aint sure.
2. They "seem" it happened. Seem aint sure.

a reply to: wildespace

It's because maybe many talked about this that I suddenly though it to be weird also I never took notice before and now that it's more under the idea that this wasn't normal I started to notice it too.

Whatever normal or not it's just there as it is..

Lol Velikovsky was an idiot. Makes for good fiction, but the moment he started taking himself too seriously was the moment he made anyone trying to pass off his sci-fi novels as reality look like a dumbass...

Elves and dwarves from LOTR seem more plausible than most space stories but it's all quite interesting and it makes people think they are smart for knowing about it.

originally posted by: theMediator
Elves and dwarves from LOTR seem more plausible than most space stories but it's all quite interesting and it makes people think they are smart for knowing about it.

Well, the "elves" from LOTR was taken by Tolkien from the legends/stories about the Tuatha Dé Danann (People of the goddess Danu) that the Celts myth/stories say lived in Eirie(Ireland) together with the Fomorians. Both were supposed to be related.

According to the Celtic writings/myths the Tuatha Dé Danann were supernatural and magical beings who lost in the war to the Milesians. There are two different stories of where they went after they were defeated. One says they were driven underground, and another story says they went to the west by sea. The second story, that they went to the west by sea was chosen by Tolkien and was depicted in the books and the movie. There are folklore stories that the Tuatha Dé Danann became "fairies." Anyway, all of this is unrelated to the op.

The big question is still... Are Klingons still circle Uranus?

originally posted by: crayzeed
You're all taking for granted that this happened. Well just look at the article and two words smack you in the face.
1. They "think" this is what happened. Think aint sure.
2. They "seem" it happened. Seem aint sure.

That is proper scientific reporting. They have a theory that seems plausible based on the evidence available. If you have a better theory then put it to them.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: Justoneman
Something huge has been creating havoc in our solar system according to this story and I am inclined to believe that much....

...We have a solar system that has some explaining to do. How do we get a planet hitting another without something extra ordinary from the simple cosmology we are told to believe about our particular system?...

I'm not sure what you mean by"the cosmology we are told to believe". What the going theories tell us about the formation of the solar system as we know it today is that, as eriktheawful pointed out, the early solar system was home to maybe dozens of planets buzzing around -- and collisions were going to happen, especially before the current planets cleared their orbital paths and settled into their current orbits.

So yeah -- what we are told by science is that there were other planetary objects causing havoc in the early solar system.

Earth itself was possibly hit by a Mars-sized planet 4 Billion years ago. I say "Earth", but the planet that got hit and would eventually become Earth was very much changed by the huge collision.

Mars with a huge scar and virtually no atmosphere

The scar on Mars (Valles Marineris) is almost certainly NOT due to a collision. It was likely formed when massive lava flows created so much weight to that area that the crust could no longer supported it, causing faults and landslides.

As for Mars losing its atmosphere: it's possible that a planetary collision was involved, but it isn't necessary. Mars could have lost its atmosphere due to a combination of its low gravity not being able to hold onto a thick atmosphere, plus the atmosphere being blown away be solar winds due to a lack of a planetary magnetic field.

Origin of our Solar System, in this case. I am using the definition of Cosmology being the origin of the development of the galaxy's and solar systems within them.

So with that frame, I submit we have somethings that have occurred that is not officially being discussed, like the "Worlds in Collision" and other theories have implied, that caused the asteroid belt and other strange phenomena that suggest it wasn't a simple disc becomes planetoids, which then become planets in this solar system. Things don't add up no matter some of those wrongly trying to frame it as settled science, once again.

originally posted by: Justoneman

So with that frame, I submit we have somethings that have occurred that is not officially being discussed, like the "Worlds in Collision" and other theories have implied, that caused the asteroid belt and other strange phenomena that suggest it wasn't a simple disc becomes planetoids, which then become planets in this solar system. Things don't add up no matter some of those wrongly trying to frame it as settled science, once again.

But why are you saying “we have somethings that have occurred that is not officially being discussed"?

As I said, the going mainstream theories -- i.e., the ones that are openly discussed, taught in schools, and have Discovery Channel/Science Channel TV documentaries about them -- is the idea that the early solar system was a chaotic place with dozens of planets with not-yet-cleared orbits hat would often collide with one another.

That is to say, planetary collisions are part of what mainstream science tells us about of the formation of our current solar system. The mainstream hypothesis of why Uranus is on its side says its because another planet once collided with it.

These things are officially being discussed.


Some of this collisions -- as the current hypotheses and theories tell us -- were caused by the orbital upheaval resulting from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune migrating to different parts of the solar system. Jupiter and Saturn were though to have moved inward and back outward again, pulling stuff (and planetoids) with them as they moved.

Uranus and Neptune are thought to have formed closer in than they are now because that's where the gas in the nebular gas and dust cloud from which the solar system was dense enough to have formed those two ice giants.


You mentioned the asteroid belt. It should be noted that the total amount of stuff in the asteroid belt is tiny -- much smaller than say our Moon. If you put all of the stuff currently in the asteroid belt together, it would be only 4% of the Moon.

Granted, some of the stuff in the asteroid belt may have once been part of these dozens of planets that existed in the early days of the solar system -- pieces that ended up there during the migration of the gas giants and ice giants -- but it's not as if the asteroid belt is the remnants of one entire planet that used to orbit in the same location of the belt.

Jupiter's gravity is what stopped the debris in the region of today's asteroid belt from coalescing into a planet. It disturbed the orbits of rocks and debris in this region so much that collisions resulted in "break up" events rather than "build up" events. Complex computer simulations with two objects the mass of the Sun and Jupiter have demonstrated that the asteroid belt we see today could indeed be the leftover remnant of the solar accretion disc. There are other possibilities for the origin of the asteroid belt, but there is no reason why the "solar accretion disc" theory should be discounted.

a reply to: Mogget

And that stayed stable for over four thousand million years as the planets including Saturn and Jupiter adjusted/shifted in there orbit's, the sun's own mass altered as it processed nuclear fusion of materials into heavier elements and the rest of the accretion disc supposedly wandered off somewhere else with the exception of the Kuiper belt and the Oort Cloud which are far beyond there orbit?.

Sorry does not make sense to me, were are the other asteroid belt's that WOULD have remained had this been the case?.

The solar system is Dynamic, it is a part of a dynamic galaxy and is constantly under dynamic gravitational influences, it is NOT a two dimensional or a fixed variable computer model, it has NO fixed variable's they are all dynamic, even the planets have gained mass since the start of the solar system though some idiot's claim that the earth for example is a closed system when it patently is not, we have regular mass increase perhaps of several hundred thousand ton's per year from space debris raining down and mostly burning up in our solar system though the far more conservative estimate of 40.000 ton's on average is often quoted, we lose some mass as well and it is not a balance as on the whole we gain more than we lose even though some LESS than conservative estimates actually exceed the conservative estimate for mass gained per year from space debris.

Every time we pass through the tail of a comet ton's of it's lost ice and dust rain down onto the earth as well.

It is possible - possible that mercury was once a larger planet than it is but that it's proximity to the sun has caused much of it's surface material to be literally vaporized away leaving only the rocky iron core of that small world, Venus may have been larger as well - not by much but even closer to the size of the earth - but it's runaway greenhouse affect mean's that it's ocean's boiled away into it's atmosphere and there the hydrogen was ripped from the water molecule's and MOSTLY bled off into space.

While the overall percentage of the mass of the solar system over this time that has altered is minuscule and perhaps even the overall percentage of the gravitational fluctuation MAY be even more minuscule it has still taken place so this too has to be factored into any view of the overall dynamic of the interplay of gravitational forces upon the asteroid belt over that period and to my mind at least over that period as happened elsewhere IF the asteroid belt was as old as the rest of the solar system AND a remnant of the accretion disc an area of gas and debris left in orbit around the sun when it was formed within a nebula - the remnant's of an ancient super giant star which exploded long ago and which then became what is called a stellar nursery a place in which new stars are born and from this accretion disc - this remaining material in orbit around our star's equator made up of unused material from that nebula and trapped by our stars own gravity in it's orbit it is theorized that the planetary body's either at the same time as or shortly after the sun itself formed from then like the rest of that accretion disc those smaller rock's in the asteroid belt which have both there own gravity and electrostatic attraction SHOULD have clustered together and even if an asteroid belt remained then it should have contained at least several VERY large body's larger than currently exist within it BUT there is no evidence that they ever did so it remain's an enigma best explained by a more recent formation and therefore most probably can NOT be a remnant of the accretion disc but rather the recycled remnant of a body that formed from that accretion disc in that orbital region and has since been destroyed.

originally posted by: Mogget
Jupiter's gravity is what stopped the debris in the region of today's asteroid belt from coalescing into a planet. It disturbed the orbits of rocks and debris in this region so much that collisions resulted in "break up" events rather than "build up" events. Complex computer simulations with two objects the mass of the Sun and Jupiter have demonstrated that the asteroid belt we see today could indeed be the leftover remnant of the solar accretion disc. There are other possibilities for the origin of the asteroid belt, but there is no reason why the "solar accretion disc" theory should be discounted.

It may have had a gravitational impact preventing the buildup of asteroids in the belt during the time the system was born but we can't be certain of the truth without travelling back to those times.

I'm sure Jupiter was able to form long before any of the material in the belt was able to collide simply because Jupiter during it's early days was within an area composed mostly of different gases. Gas would have clumped together around Jupiter's core and picked up anything catching up after a cycle around the Sun. It doesn't make much sense why the asteroid belt and jupiter are so far apart. The asteroid and Kuiper belt has more material than we visibly see.

forgot this thread was about Uranus.
I don't think anything collided with Uranus. Maybe something passed by close enough to alter it.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Thank you for your insightful observations that added a great deal to this thread.

a reply to: SpaghettiHero

Either by collision or proximity something big was involved in the change of rotation to Uranus. Our solar system does not fit into a neat little package for Astronomy 101 students to study. It is very dynamic as Labtech pointed out for us.

The fact that the Solar System is dynamic does not automatically rule out the possibility that today's asteroid belt is a remnant of the solar accretion disc. It simply means that a lot has happened over those 4.6 billion years.

originally posted by: Mogget
The fact that the Solar System is dynamic does not automatically rule out the possibility that today's asteroid belt is a remnant of the solar accretion disc. It simply means that a lot has happened over those 4.6 billion years.

The whole Solar System is a remnant of the solar accretion disc. And yes, a LOT has happened in the early Solar System.

Consider Venus' extremely slow retrograde rotation, Mars' gigantic volanoes like the Olympus mons and the huge "scar" that is Valles Marineris, the main asteroid belt, Jupiter's trojans. Uranus' tilt.

I don't subscribe to Velikovsky and the Electric Universe "theory", but they might have been closer to the mark than we think.

a reply to: wildespace


Valles Marinaris is now thought to have been caused by forces and processes on Mars itself -- nothing external. It is believed that excessive lava flows on the Tharsis Bulge were so heavy that the crust beneath partially gave way.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People
a reply to: wildespace


Valles Marinaris is now thought to have been caused by forces and processes on Mars itself -- nothing external. It is believed that excessive lava flows on the Tharsis Bulge were so heavy that the crust beneath partially gave way.

On such a relatively small and distant planet like Mars, what could have caused such powerful lava flows and the creation of Mons Olympus (the largest vocano in the Solar System!) as well as three other huge volcanoes nearby?

originally posted by: wildespace

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People
a reply to: wildespace


Valles Marinaris is now thought to have been caused by forces and processes on Mars itself -- nothing external. It is believed that excessive lava flows on the Tharsis Bulge were so heavy that the crust beneath partially gave way.

On such a relatively small and distant planet like Mars, what could have caused such powerful lava flows and the creation of Mons Olympus (the largest vocano in the Solar System!) as well as three other huge volcanoes nearby?

Distant and small notwithstanding, Mars was very geologically active between 3 and 4 billion years ago while it was still cooling after its formation.

Mars likely had tectonic plates and magma chambers and lots of volcanism.

The three Tharsis Montes volcanoes on the Tharsis Plateau that are in a straight line potentially formed that way due to the tectonic movement of the crust over a hot spot — much like island chains have been formed on earth in the same way.

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan

Uranus Hit by Rock twice the size of Earth

I thought I felt something a few minutes ago.

Hope it didn't leave a crater!