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Astronomers Discover 12 New Moons Orbiting Jupiter - One on Collision Course With the Others (theguardian.com)
One of a dozen new moons discovered around Jupiter is circling the planet on a suicide orbit that will inevitably lead to its violent destruction, astronomers say. From a report: Researchers in the US stumbled upon the new moons while hunting for a mysterious ninth planet that is postulated to lurk far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the most distant planet in the solar system. The team first glimpsed the moons in March last year from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, but needed more than a year to confirm that the bodies were locked in orbit around the gas giant. "It was a long process," said Scott Sheppard, who led the effort at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC. Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, was hardly short of moons before the latest findings. The fresh haul of natural satellites brings the total number of Jovian moons to 79, more than are known to circle any other planet in our cosmic neighbourhood. A head-on collision between two Jovian moons would create a crash so large it would be visible from earth, astronomers said.
TLDR: “Collisions don’t happen all that frequently, every billion years or so,” said Sheppard. “If one did happen, we would be able to detect it from Earth, but it is unlikely to happen anytime soon.”
We already have NINE planets.
*mic drop*
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
>> stumbled upon (Jupiter's) new moons while hunting for a mysterious ninth planet
I think I figured out why they didn't find the ninth planet: they were looking at the fifth.
If the collision time can be predicted, I hope they send a probe to catch the Big Smash close up.
Table-ized A.I.
.... That's no moon ....
They're supposed to have converted Jupiter into a 2nd sun by now.
...may collide...
nothing to see here - move along
That astrophysicists and astronomers are always explaining how the universe began, how it works, how many stars there are, where black holes are, estimating the numbers of "Earth-like" planets there are and how many likely support life... and then they discover 12 more moons around Jupiter or some other enormous hole in the knowledge of our own galactic neighborhood.
And what exactly is your point? Little tiny hard to see dark things that are far away are hard to see. News at 11.
Hell, they can't even determine with any real accuracy the number of stars in the Milky Way.
It's a little hard to get an exact count when you have an immensely bright galactic core blocking your view of much of the galaxy. It's actually easier to count the stars in other galaxies because we can see more of them. Again, what exactly is your point?
Maybe we should be less concerned with what may or may not have happened 13.8 billion years ago and start focusing on what's immediately around us.
Thanks for setting the astrophysics community straight. I'm sure they'll be grateful for your help because you clearly know what's important to their jobs more than they do.
Like going back to the moon and performing experiments there before playing around with sending people on a one-way trip to Mars.
You have no idea what astrophysicists and astronomers actually do, do you? Here's a tip. They aren't the ones sending people to the moon or to mars. You might not want to get your job descriptions confused or you might seem ignorant in public.
The Jovian system is all around fascinating. With all of the moons and Jupiter's large EM field, it's a great future destination for humanity. Build a few thousand (big) rotating habitats over a couple centuries and all-in-all I could see the Jovian system supporting more human life than currently exists on Earth. Well, at least in the far future (if we have one). Especially with the asteroid belt being between Mars and Jupiter. Not that it would be easy.
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Stars are "born", "die", and merge. Any exact number would soon be obsolete. And pointless.
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A head-on collision between two Jovian moons would create a crash so large it would be visible from earth, astronomers said. --- Ok, what time frame: minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia?
Or maybe we should keep learning what we can about everything, near and far? There are two kinds of ignorance: the things you KNOW you don't know, and the things you DON'T KNOW you don't know. The researchers went to work trying to answer a question of the first type (some orbital observations of bodies in the solar system suggest a planet or something else odd floating about in distant space) and ended up answering a question of the second type. Nobody suspected additional moons around Jupiter or had suggested looking for them.
Astronomers Discover 12 New Moons Orbiting Jupiter - One on Collision Course With the Others
Oh no, when they collide most of the boulders will be flung directly at Earth, mainly New York and San Francisco!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If we can demote planets (Ceres too was once counted as a planet), it is time to tighten up the definition of moon.
Exactly what do you think is loose about the definition? I'm not opposed to the idea but what do you find confusing or misleading about the current definition?
We should be redefining things with some regularity as we learn more. We probably should have different categories for different types of planets. Jupiter is a far different sort of object than Earth. Pluto and Eris probably are a separate category of object as well. Call them a planet if you like (I don't care) but then you have to say what kind of planet. Otherwise it's like saying a lion and your house cat are the same thing when they clearly are not.
Jupiter has four moons, and a bunch of rocks making up a 1/300 of one percent of the total mass in orbit. And Mars, sorry.
If my count is right at least 13 of Jupiter's moons are larger than either of the moons of Mars. Relative size definitions don't really make much sense. Absolute size definitions seem to be pretty arbitrary. How would you propose changing the definition to account for something not currently accounted for?
Forest from the trees, et al
moox. for a new generation.
After all these years, I still haven't figured this out: the sixth planet explodes (and presumably all its debris completely disappears in about 15 years). [deep breath] Ok!
But then Reliant visits the fifth planet, in the mistaken belief that it's the sixth? That's .. [another deep breath] a surprising mistake!
"The shock shifted the orbits" seems like a lot of handwaving to me. Anyone wanna explain?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I'd love to see a citation (ISBN, Chapter, Page, Paragraph) for that. My guess is that you are simply mistaken at best and full of shit at worst.
The count of stars, or exoplanets, or moons within the solar system are all that we now know. Every jump in accuracy or our detection methods brings forth more. This does not mean that we somehow screwed up in our first estimation.
The term "dark matter" is a placeholder for "we donâ(TM)t know" what's causing the gravitational discrepancies we see. There's nothing to disprove. It might very well turn out to be a math error (really, General Relatively being incomplete).
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Pluto has been demoted to a Minor Planet, that means it is a planet.
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
I guess if one is in a retrograde orbit, there would be a head-on collision. That would certainly put that one on collision course with "the others" (plural).
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I remember my father's response when I told him about 20 years ago that Jupiter had multiple moons: "Why would God put so many moons there when there's no-one there to see their moonlight?"
I mean it is too broad. It could include million of pebbles in unstable orbits. Or ice cubes slowly "orbiting" each other in the Kuiper belt.
So what? I don't say that to be snide (seriously) but why does it objectively matter where it is a small number or a big number so long as the definition is a useful one? If the most useful definition of a planet or a moon results in millions of them I don't see that as a problem. I'm open to categories that have small numbers of objects in them but there has to be a useful reason to make the distinction.
There could be countless rocks orbiting earth too. When there was one moon, and then five, we knew what the word meant. Now it is too open and never-ending.
The universe is under no obligation to conform to what you think is convenient. We're in a universe that is billions of light years in diameter with almost countless galaxies and stars and you are worried about there being a lot of pebbles surrounding some large rocks in an insignificant star system?
Yep. That's why I said "sorry, Mars". They are only temporary rocks. Phobos will be gone in a few million years, while the seven "real" moons will be there for billions at least.
Any planet with a sufficient number of moons is probably going to have some with unstable orbits. Again I'm not hearing any principled reason why we shouldn't define that as a moon. I hear what you are saying but your argument seems to be based on what you find comfortable and familiar rather than from objective differences between categories of objects.
I think it states: "Maybe we should be less concerned with what may or may not have happened 13.8 billion years ago and start focusing on what's immediately around us.
No you make and argument about what astrophysicists do and then say they should be worried about doing what the folks at NASA and SpaceX are doing as if they somehow are wasting their time. Those are not mutually exclusive activities. So you haven't made a useful point here.
Like going back to the moon and performing experiments there before playing around with sending people on a one-way trip to Mars."
The people who are concerned with what happened 13.8 billion years ago are not the same people who are sending people to Mars. That's like arguing that someone who is really good at cooking should take up farming because they both happen to involve food. It's a stupid argument by someone who doesn't understand either profession adequately.
You may want to bone up on your reading comprehension skills.
Once you stop conflating concepts we can discuss my reading comprehension.
So I like the idea of there being one and only one Moon. Our Moon.
Just like there is one Sun, the rest are just stars.
So Jupiter has zero Moons. But does have a bunch of orbiting debris around it, some of which are quite large! :)
Knowledge of science. I faced this with a very accomplished astronomer from NASA back in the 1970s. I don't even remember the guys name. I was able to talk to him after a presentation. I asked about planets outside of our solar system. He said - nope, not possible. That's fiction. No doubt in his mind we're it. Keep in mind I'm a 12 year old kid at the time. I asked how many stars are out there? He came up with some big number. I said - so how come we're it. Seems like there would be at least 1 other out there. He was having none of it. I lost interest in astronomy for decades.
Here we are all of these years later and it's fact that there are planets in other solar systems. I have a feeling that he based what he said on what science knew at the time and can prove as established fact. Being Mr. Way great astronomer guy, how could he depart from the science gospel? I think that's reasonable.
Probably the same thing in your text book. That's what they knew at the time. I remember when I was in college we only had 109 elements. That's the great thing about science. We can learn from it as long as people don't make it political to pad their pocketbook.