Image Credit: NASA GSFC/Jay Friedlander and Britt Griswold
They’re like planets, but smaller and cuter.
In today’s generation, new words are constantly being made up. Some make a lot of sense, while others seem to fall short of the mark. Scientists are joining in on the fun and trying to create a new word of their own: ploonets.
Ploonets is a cross between a moon and a planet. A paper written in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society states that exomoons orbiting giant exoplanets might soon be kicked out of orbit by gravitational interactions. If that happens, where do they go? The theory is that the exomoons that exist with their parent planet could become a small planet themselves. Ergo, ploonets.
Planets that could exist out there may have been starting to migrate inwards. The planets existed close to a host star, which was extremely hot. Because of how hot it was, it didn’t really migrate inwards. But, because the conditions close to the star are so hot, most of the gas would have burned away. The moons that were migrating with them would have generated additional gravitational forces between the moon and the planet.
Simulations were run at the University of Antioquia in Colombia to see what these forces would do. Their study found that about 44 percent of their moons ended up crashing into their plants. Six percent were eaten up by the star. Two percent ended up getting kicked out of the planetary system completely. 48 percent remained separated from their planet but stayed in orbit around the star. This 48% would represent the ploonets.
It is all hypothetical at this point, but all signs point to this kind of trend happening. It is even said that because the Earth’s tidal strength continues to push our Moon away from Earth at 3 centimeters a year, it could one day become a ploonet itself.
