[Seruzawa]

Or it wandered in from somewhere else. Or The Protectors did it. Or Niburu tilted it. One guess is as good as another.

[kvanbrunt2]

uranus is gay.

[Macoozie]

” Uranus’s Kooky Off-Kilter Axis”

The jokes write themselves. . .

[simpson96]

... a moon with a minimum mass of around half that of Earth's Moon could tilt Uranus towards 90 degrees if it migrated by more than 10 times the radius of Uranus at a rate higher than 6 centimeters per year.

They present this theory about Jupiter and Saturn as well, but never say anything about how an outwardly migrating moon would cause a planet to tilt.

It sounds so improbable; I'd have liked at least a morsel of the "why".

Anyone here know why that would happen? Jupier's moon Ganymede alone, causing Jupiter to tilt and tilt? That's wild.

[niteowl]

Our own Moon is currently moving away from Earth at a rate of about 4 centimeters (1.6 inches) per year. Bodies orbiting a mutual center of gravity exert a tidal force on each other that gradually causes their rotations to slow. In turn, this loosens gravity's grip so that the distance between the two bodies widens.

Typical lack of scientific understanding by a journalist. The tidal force doesn't "loosen gravity's grip"...gravity of earth and moon are constants. The tidal effect causes the bodies to accelerate and move to higher orbits around their center of gravity, causing them to move apart.

The smaller Moon is already tidally locked with Earth...the orbit and rotation periods are the same so it always shows the same "face" towards us. But the Moon is gradually slowing the Earth's rotation, so in a few billion years our "day" will be the same as the Moon's orbit period.