Some of the planets in our solar system are rocky and some are gaseous. All of the moons in our solar system are rocky. Some moons in the solar system are not made of gas. Is there a moon in the universe?
There are a lot of good reasons why nearby moons are not gaseous. Jonathan Lunine is the chair of the Department of Astronomy at Cornell University.
The influence of tidal forces and the moon's mass would determine it.
Could the moon ever be pushed from its normal position?
Imagine if our own moon&s rocky composition were replaced with pure hydrogen. Lunine said that the moon would grow to be about the size of Earth.
One of the reasons they can exist is the huge size of gas giants like Jupiter. The force of gravity would not be strong enough to hold those light elements together if they were too small.
There are other factors at play, such as size and temperature.
Lunine said to take the moon as a rock and put a hydrogen atmosphere around it. The warmth of the sun will cause the hydrogen to evaporate away.
Lunine said that the moon at the distance of the Earth from the sun is not going to be stable. He said that was true even as far out as Pluto.
Even if our gas moon was the size of Earth and the surrounding temperature was very cold, it would still be torn apart by its host planet.
Lunine said that the moon is subject to tidal forces from the Earth. It doesn't get torn apart because it has some material strength associated with it.
That is not the case with the hypothetical moon.
How could a moon be made of gas? The moon-planet system has to be very distant or large.
It is not going to work if it is the size of our moon. In the depths of space? Lunine said that if you want to make something big, like a Neptune around a Jupiter, then you can do it.
The tidal forces that would destroy the Neptune-size moon would likely be kept out by the forces holding these huge bodies together.
Lunine said that it could be perfectly stable.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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