Pluto's Outer Moons Orbit Chaotically, With Unpredictable Sunrises and Sunsets

StartsWithABang writes: Few things in this world are as regular as sunrise and sunset. With the application of a little physics, you can predict exactly where and when the sun will rise or set from any location on Earth. Thus far, every world in our Solar System — planet, moon and asteroid — has had the exact same experience as us. But out in the Kuiper belt, Pluto is different. The only known world in the Solar System where a significant fraction of the system's mass is not in a single component, the outer moons of the Pluto-Charon system provide a unique environment to study how planets might behave in orbit around binary stars. The amazing takeaway? The rotational part of the orbit is chaotic; the worlds tumble, and hence sunrises and sunsets are no longer predictable.

Comments

Re:Do they really mean "chaotic"?

[srussia]

Yes. It's an n-body dynamical system.

Re:Incredible

[Lumpy]

medium.com's definition of chaotic is getting the wrong coffee from the barista.