Space mysteries: Why are there no gas moons?

[Admin]

In our solar system we have rocky moons, ocean moons and frozen-ice moons, but there are no gas moons. Are we just unlucky not to have any gas moons, or are there physical reasons why they cannot exist?

Space mysteries: Why are there no gas moons? : Read more

 

[Atlan0001]

There may be many mini and micro gas moons out in the Kuiper and Oort clouds . . . so light and/or so different a froth as to form and reside at the top (the outside) of the system. I used to think about where the lightest possible stuff of solar systems, versus the rest, might bubble and reside.

Now that I think about it, maybe the top (the outside) of galaxy systems, too.

 

[rod]

"The two candidate exomoons mentioned at the beginning of this article — Kepler 1625b-i and Kepler 1708b-i — are both gas giants in their own right, but they appear to be satellites to even larger gas giants. "I will stress that both of these are candidates," said Christiansen. "We see something in the data that is consistent with a moon, but there are other things that could explain it too."

Kepler 1708b-i is listed at the exoplanet.eu site as an exomoon. https://exoplanet.eu/catalog/exomoon_kepler_1708_b_i--8059/

So we have gas giant planets in our solar system where those moons formed very differently than our Moon via giant impact and now possible very large exomoons that do not fit our solar system model either. Intriguing.

 

[Kehk in a MiG]

There may be many mini and micro gas moons out in the Kuiper and Oort clouds . . . so light and/or so different a froth as to form and reside at the top (the outside) of the system. I used to think about where the lightest possible stuff of solar systems, versus the rest, might bubble and reside.

Now that I think about it, maybe the top (the outside) of galaxy systems, too.

I had not considered this. More or less every Kuiper belt object is either a gas or water world. All that's needed is for one to orbit another. Bam: frozen "gas moon".

 

[ARTGLICK]

In our solar system we have rocky moons, ocean moons and frozen-ice moons, but there are no gas moons. Are we just unlucky not to have any gas moons, or are there physical reasons why they cannot exist?

Space mysteries: Why are there no gas moons? : Read more

Some only grew as large as Mars or Venus, but others kept growing, forming giant rocky bodies with up to 10 times the mass of Jupiter.

That has to be a misprint. Did you mean 10 times the mass of Earth?