A victim of planetary pinball (Image: Chuck Elliot/Getty)

URANUS may have been batted back and forth between Jupiter and Saturn before being flung out to its present location, new simulations suggest.

Previous modelling has shown that Jupiter and Saturn moved out of their initial orbits in the early solar system, scattering nearby objects.

In some simulations, this led to Uranus crossing the path of Saturn, which could then have flung it towards Jupiter, which lobbed it back to Saturn. The process might have happened three times before Uranus was finally ejected beyond Saturn, to where it now resides. Hurling Uranus …