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Although the Moon is Earth's only natural satellite, there are a number of near-Earth objects (NEOs) with orbits that are in resonance with Earth. These have been called "second" moons of Earth or "minimoons". [2] [3] 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, an asteroid discovered on 27 April 2016, is possibly the most stable quasi-satellite of Earth. [4]
NASA's Galileo ' s measurements suggest that large moons can have magnetic fields; it found Ganymede has its own magnetosphere, even though its mass is only 2.5% of Earth's. [18] Alternatively, the moon's atmosphere may be constantly replenished by gases from subsurface sources, as thought by some scientists to be the case with Titan. [21]
Some moons, minor planets and comets of the Solar System to scale (major planets not to scale) Selected moons, with Earth to scale. Nineteen moons are large enough to be round, and two, Titan and Triton, have substantial atmospheres The number of moons discovered in each year until November 2019. Mercury, the smallest and innermost planet, has ...
Earth is getting a temporary second "mini moon," a.k.a. the 2024 PT5 asteroid. Here's how you can see it and if it will affect your astrological star sign.
Some 4.5 billion years ago, when Earth was only 100 million years old or so, a Mars-sized protoplanet named Theia smashed into our planet, ejecting loads that eventually returned to the Earth’s ...
Models for moon formation suggest the formation of even more massive moons than Ganymede is common around many of the super-Jovian exoplanets. [39] Earth-sized exoplanets in the habitable zone around M-dwarfs are often tidally locked to the host star. This has the effect that one hemisphere always faces the star, while the other remains in ...
The majority of detected exoplanets are giant planets; at least one, Kepler-1625b, may have a very large exomoon, named Kepler-1625b I, which could theoretically host a subsatellite. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] Nonetheless, aside from human-launched satellites in temporary lunar orbit , no subsatellite is known in the Solar System or beyond.
While Earth is the only place in the Universe known to harbor life, [10] [11] estimates of habitable zones around other stars, [12] [13] along with the discovery of thousands of exoplanets and new insights into the extreme habitats on Earth where organisms known as extremophiles live, suggest that there may be many more habitable places in the ...