Why is Uranus so laid back?

It's just plain boring. A featureless cue ball hanging in space. Even its moons are nothing to write home about.

The only interesting thing about the ice giant is that it's lying on its side.

Scientists thought it had been knocked over in a huge collision many years ago, but now even this exciting past is being erased.

A new theory has come out to explain the extreme tilt.

During the early days of the solar system the planets had a habit of wandering about before settling into their established orbits.

The Observatoire de Paris in France believes Uranus was 'tugged' by a moon while it migrated to the outer reaches of space.

Only problem is the planet's moons are far too small to be the culprit. The researchers believe this missing moon got so bored by Uranus's company it left the party early.

This does offer up one fascinating question - where could it be now?

Ever the champion of the underdog, I've dug up some Weird Science Factoids about the socially-challenged gas ball.

On March 13, 1781, an English astronomer named William Herschel discovered the planet but thought it might have been a comet.

Because of the strange way it spins, nights on some parts of Uranus can last for more than 40 years.

It is the second least dense planet after Saturn.

The faint bluish color of the planet is because the methane gas in the atmosphere absorbs red light and reflects blue light.

Though a boring blue ball in the visible spectrum, Uranus comes alive in other wavelengths, like infrared, when you'll see that Uranus does have bands and cloud patterns.

It has 27 known satellites. But they're a pretty lightweight group of moons. If you could add up all their mass, they would account for less than half the mass of Triton, Neptune's largest moon.

Uranus has a system of 11 rings, which are made up of black chunks of rock and ice. The brightest ring is called epsilon.

It's the coldest planet in the solar system, even though it's far closer to the sun than Neptune. Uranus actually gives off less heat than it absorbs from the Sun. The other large planets have tremendously hot cores, and radiate infrared radiation. But something made the core of Uranus cool down to the point that it doesn't radiate much heat. The temperature of the cloud tops on Uranus can dip down to -224°C.

On its trip around the planet's Voyager 2 recorded the sound of Uranus.

Weird Science Factoid: Identical twins do not have identical fingerprints. Pity, it could have made for an excellent crime thriller!

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