Astronomers have found lots of exoplanets but not much evidence of exomoons, and a new model might explain why – rocky worlds much larger than Earth can’t form moons
Rocky planets much bigger than Earth might not be able to form large moons like our own, which is crucial for Earth’s stable rotation and climate., but moons in other solar systems have proved more elusive. While this lack of exomoons could be because they are hard to spot and we haven’t looked with powerful-enough telescopes, it is also possible that the moons don’t exist at all.
The model that Nakajima and her team used assumed that the disc could be modelled like a fluid. It also assumed that the object hitting the planet and leading to disc formation struck the planet at an angle of 48 degrees, which previous moon-forming models had used. Future work could explore a range of angles to better confirm the apparent lack of moons, saysHowever, the lack of moons found in Nakajima and her team’s work is still useful for astronomers.
“They’re saying [planets] that are six Earth masses, or 1.6 Earth radii, shouldn’t form large moons,” says Kipping, who led an exomoon-hunting mission with the Kepler satellite. “That’s great, because I can go out and look for those. If I find them, that’s really interesting. And if we don’t find them, then we have credence for this theory.”
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