ANDREA wrote:Many, if not most of Minor planets are double, as is the other just discovered TNO, 2003 EL61. The big one has captured the smaller one. So why not the same for the Pluto-Charon system?
Apparently Pluto-Charon and 2003 EL61 plus little friend have dynamics that contradict simple capture dynamics. I read that in passing in the draft paper giving the 2003 EL61 moon's orbital elements, for example. All the other TNO moons could have been captured though.
ANDREA wrote:It's not evidence, it's only a theory. Anyhow, Oort's cloud is not Solar System, or is it? In the first case if coming from there it would be of extrasolar origin, in the second would be not. :confused:
Ah, I see. I think the Oort cloud is part of the solar system, or at least it formed from the solar nebula. Things move so slowly and so far apart out there that that they didn't converge into a plane. I think these protoplanetary disks imaged around stars can be several thousand A.U. wide as well. Since there's nothing beyond that for comets to form from, some astronomers think Oort comets are from planetesimals that were scattered randomly by Jupiter or Saturn.
It would be interesting to find a serious consideration of extrasolar bodies captured in our system - Sedna is an oddball!
ANDREA wrote:Anyhow we are speaking of Angel's sex,
Yes! An angel won't take his/her clothes off for us like these TNO's won't leap into our telescopes view!
Spiff.