What smacked Uranus on its side? Something icy and as massive as Earth, scientists say.

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Astronomers have worked out details of the giant impact that knocked Uranus so famously askew.

What smacked Uranus on its side? Something icy and as massive as Earth, scientists say. : Read more

I’m wondering if Earth could have smacked Uranus taking a large volume of water and leaving Uranus on its side. Is it possible????

FYI, Uranus big smack has been in the news over the years. In 2011, this report came out, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111006084235.htm, "...However, the simulation threw up an unexpected result: in the above scenario, the moons displayed retrograde motion -- that is to say, they orbited in the opposite direction to that which we observe. Morbidelli's group tweaked their parameters in order to explain this. The surprising discovery was that if Uranus was not tilted in one go, as is commonly thought, but rather was bumped in at least two smaller collisions, then there is a much higher probability of seeing the moons orbit in the direction we observe. This research is at odds with current theories of how planets form, which may now need adjusting. Morbidelli elaborates: "The standard planet formation theory assumes that Uranus, Neptune and the cores of Jupiter and Saturn formed by accreting only small objects in the protoplanetary disk. They should have suffered no giant collisions. The fact that Uranus was hit at least twice suggests that significant impacts were typical in the formation of giant planets. So, the standard theory has to be revised."

I note *tweaked their parameters in order to explain this*. Keep on tweaking the giant impacts. The current report has interesting items in it too for the model, here is another example. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-uranus-oddities-japanese-astronomers.html, "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."

My observation, like Theia, this 3 earth mass object is an NOO, non-observable object and the impact event, I call a UE or unobserved event. Perhaps a UOE, an unobservable event. Here is something from the abstract, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1049-8, "The ice-giant planet Uranus probably underwent a giant impact, given that its spin axis is tilted by 98 degrees1,2,3. That its satellite system is equally inclined and prograde suggests that it was formed as a consequence of the impact. However, the disks predicted by the impact simulations1,3,4 generally have sizes one order smaller and masses two orders larger than those of the observed system at present. Here we show, by means of a theoretical model, that the Uranian satellite formation is regulated by the evolution of the impact-generated disk. Because the vaporization temperature of water ice is low and both Uranus and the impactor are assumed to be ice-dominated, we can conclude that the impact-generated disk has mostly vaporized. We predict that the disk lost a substantial amount of water vapour mass and spread to the levels of the current system until the disk cooled down enough for ice condensation and accretion of icy particles to begin."

More NOOs and UE or UOEs used in the model. Keep *tweaking* :)

"I’m wondering if Earth could have smacked Uranus taking a large volume of water and leaving Uranus on its side. Is it possible????"

(It just says "as massive as Earth" not actually Earth.)

I think this unlikely. A Mars size object (Theia) hit Earth about 4 billion years ago and produced the Moon. Presumably your collision with Uranus must have been before this. If Earth. When was this suggested to happen and where would the water have come from? Whilst there may be some water in the mantle, hydrogen, helium and methane compose the atmosphere. The heat of a major collision would have substantially reduced such atmospheric volatiles.

Catastrophe, it looks like in your model, we have an Earth smack down event with Uranus that allowed Earth, perhaps the proto-earth to carry off plenty of water from Uranus. Then the proto-earth migrating inwards, parked itself into a 1 AU orbit around the Sun. Theia shows up and we have another smack down event to create the Moon.

Okay, giant impact events in new computer models for rocky type planets can create the synestia phase of matter, a new phase of hot matter not seen yet in astronomy, Planetary collisions can drop the internal pressures in planets
I see various studies now on the synestia phase from planetary impacts. It seems to me, no water would remain though.