this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Space
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Cover author: Michał Kałużny http://astrofotografia.pl/
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This is basically what's thought to have happened with proto-Earth and Theia in one of the main Moon-creation hypotheses.
Main planet forms, creating a gravity well. Smaller clump forms at a Lagrange point of that gravity well. Then it gathers too much material or something else causes a destabilisation of the Lagrange point, causing the smaller, possibly now well-formed clump, to fall towards the Lagrange centre, i.e. the main planet.
In Earth's case, the clump was Theia and the resulting collision exchanged material and ultimately spat out the Earth and the Moon.
Maybe the same will happen in this burgeoning system, but we might be waiting a while to see.
It's at the L5 point and currently forming, I don't know if it's possible but I really hope they can guess at the likely end mass of each proto planet in the system.
Will this planet exceed the mass ratio for stability at L5? What happens to the the orbits when the two gas giants form?
There are so many cool questions