Uranus Moon Theory Debated

FortKnox writes "Y! has an interesting article on, what is said to be the most puzzling moon in the solar system, The Uranus moon Miranda. Due to the extreme differences in the textures of the surface, a theory of how it happened came about. The old theory was that the moon was shattered in the early ages of the solar system, but fell back together. But now the theory is in question. Instead of something smashing the surface breaking it, they believe it may have to do with seismic activity. Quite an interesting read."

Comments

Hey, two articles in a row! ;-)

[FortKnox]

Question: the article states that moons breaking apart and coming back together isn't such an akward theory. I know it mentions a moon on Saturn that almost blew apart, but that kinda seems far-fetched to me. How does it "fall back together"? Once its in little pieces, it looses its gravity, so how do the "pieces" stay together? I'm just a touch puzzled by this.

Sorry about the bad grammar in the article, its still morning for me...

Re:Hey, two articles in a row! ;-)

[JabberWokky]

It is like watching an exploding firework

Which begs the question of *what* causes moons to explode in such a fashion. The term "explode" implies a fairly uniform outward expansion together with fragmentation. A collision would (presumably) cause a very directional push that would not only scatter the fragments into positions where they would gather to more localized centers of gravity, but would also (I'm assuming quite a bit about the energy necessary to shatter a moon) likely kick the moon into an unstable orbit, or at least a highly eccentric one.

I assume the research and simulations have been done - a fairly in depth google search didn't come up with any. Anybody got any explinations/pointers to more info?

--
Evan