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Space

Exomoons that run away from their planets could become 'ploonets'

By Chelsea Whyte

4 July 2019

Exoplanet and ploonets

Exoplanets could throw off their moons

T. PYLE/JPL-CALTECH/NASA

Despite a lot of searching, we haven鈥檛 found a moon around an exoplanet yet. According to a new study, that could be because these exomoons have been ejected from orbit around their home planet and turned into miniature planets called 鈥減loonets鈥. Our own moon may even become a ploonet one day.

Mario Sucerquia at the University of Antioquia in Colombia聽and his colleagues modelled the interplay between exomoons and the giant planets they could orbit 鈥 gas worlds between 0.5 and 1.8 times the mass of Neptune.

We have observed these…

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