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Title: Posible? (well, what do you think?) Post by: shambler on 2006-05-11, 11:43 "Neptune's moon Triton used to be paired with another object, but was torn from its companion during capture by the eighth planet's gravitational field."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4758091.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4758091.stm) "Dr Buie explained that Pluto seemed to be very similar to Neptune's moon Triton, which is thought to be a Kuiper belt object captured by Neptune's gravity. This is despite the fact that the process of capture should have altered Triton's surface drastically through heating. "I'm surprised Triton and Pluto aren't more different than they are," he told the BBC News website." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4230918.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4230918.stm) seems to me, this might be the answer. Title: Re: Posible? Post by: Phoenix on 2006-05-11, 22:12 You never know.
Title: Re: Posible? Post by: Lopson on 2006-05-12, 11:34 Interesting stuff, I had no idea.
Title: Re: Posible? Post by: shambler on 2006-05-12, 17:35 here we have pluto at the top, and triton at the bottom.
pluto is about 2300Km and triton is about 3800km across. Pluto acctually passes across neptunes orbit each time it goes around the sun, (a pluto year is about 256 of our years) so it couls get 'caught' as it crossed over. all these sizes are from memory, but are accurate enogh to give you the picture. pluto itself has 3 other moons that may have formed when things went wrong for the pair. this will hence forth be known as 'shamblers theory of binary planets.' |