Why is the planet Uranus has a nearly horizontal axis?
Nobody really knows why. One theory is that it was “whacked” at sometime during the early formation of the solar system. It would have had to be a quite large object. These large collisions would have been fairly common in the early solar system. Earth’s moon is thought to have ben created by a Mars – sized object colliding with the proto- Earth bilions of years ago. Even Uranus’ moons orbit the planet perpendicularly to the ecliptic plane. Some think that Pluto may have been a moon of Uranus that was flung out of its orbit around Uranus in this collision or another. Uranus is so far away that it’s difficult to gather much information about it. The “whack” theory is the most plausible – for me at least.
