Exomoons that run away from their planets could become ‘ploonets’

T. PYLE/JPL-CALTECH/NASA

By Chelsea Whyte

Despite rather just a few browsing, we haven’t came upon a moon around an exoplanet yet. In step with a novel look, that may well perchance be because these exomoons had been ejected from orbit around their home planet and grew to grow to be into runt planets called “ploonets”. Our private moon may well also even grow to be a ploonet someday.

Mario Sucerquia at the University of Antioquia in Colombia and his colleagues modelled the interaction between exomoons and the extensive planets they may well perchance orbit – gasoline worlds between 0.5 and 1.8 times the mass of Neptune.

We …