News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Jupiter has 10 more moons we didn't know about. Parent comment

Re:Jupiter has 10 more moons we didn't know about by magduf on Thursday July 19, 2018 @12:38PM (#17567993)
Mars' moons are really nothing more than captured asteroids. They look like "strange shaped rock things" because that's exactly what an asteroid is: just some random piece of rock.

As for the spherical shape, the term there is hydrostatic equilibrium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_equilibrium.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Jupiter has 10 more moons we didn't know about by ars on Thursday July 19, 2018 @01:47PM (#17568736)
> Mars' moons are really nothing more than captured asteroids.

Keep in mind it's not actually possible to just "capture" an asteroid. The object needs to lose speed somehow in order to be captured.

Most likely via collision - something large hitting the planet, or two other moons crashing.

So the story of the moons is much more complicated than just "random piece of rock".

[ Parent | on HN ]