Re: Pluto's new moons

In article <43FD8F78.5CFE22BF@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Alan Johnson wrote:
In a companion paper, discovery team members led by Dr. Alan Stern of
the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo., conclude that the two
small moons were very likely born in the same giant impact that gave
birth to Charon. They also argue that large binary Kuiper Belt objects
like Pluto-Charon may also have small moons accompanying them, and that
Pluto's small moons may generate debris rings that orbit the planet.

I was reading one of the SWRI's papers on modelling the formation
of the Moon (Canup and others, about 1998, Nature, I could dig out the
reference if I took the time) where they noted that in a significant
number of runs of their model they generated several planetesimals from
the debris disc, which then rapidly evolved into mutual resonance and
cleaned up all minor bits of debris.
That's as close to the prediction of these satellites as you need
to get to justify cracking a bottle of the GOOD bubbly!

--
Aidan Karley FGS
Aberdeen, Scotland,
Location: 57°10'11" N, 02°08'43" W (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233

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