Other
Scientific paper
Jul 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dda....38.0305l&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #38, #3.05
Other
Scientific paper
How did Pluto's recently discovered minor moons form? Ward and Canup propose an elegant solution in which Nix and Hydra formed in the collision that produced Charon, then were caught into corotation resonances with Charon, and finally were transported to their current location as Charon migrated outwards. We show with numerical integrations that, if Charon's eccentricity is judiciously chosen, this scenario works beautifully for either Nix or Hydra. However, it cannot work for both Nix and Hydra simultaneously. To transport Nix, Charon's eccentricity cannot exceed 0.024; otherwise, the second order Lindblad resonance at 4:1 overlaps with the corotation resonance, leading to chaos. To transport Hydra, Charon's eccentricity cannot be less than 0.8(R_Pluto/a_Charon); otherwise migration would be faster than libration, and Hydra would slip out of resonance. These two restrictions conflict. Having ruled out this scenario, we explore an alternative: that Nix and Hydra were captured from the nebular disk, along with many small bodies, and that Nix and Hydra migrated inwards, eventually becoming trapped in resonance with Charon.
Lithwick Yoram
Wu Yihong
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