- #1
sderamus
- 19
- 0
Gliese 581 g, assuming it's real, is supposedly tidally locked being so close to its parent star. That makes sense. It also means it is probably not a very habitable planet - one side being a burnt desert and the other a frozen wasteland, with only the margins capable of supporting life. Maybe.
But what if it had a moon? Would that "unlock" it and allow it to rotate like the earth? I don't understand the details of the physics of tidally locking well enough to answer it, but intuitively it seems like it ought to.
I was reading that moons around our gas planets don't have moonlets because the gravitational pull of the close giant would disrupt their orbits so much that a moonlet would just get thrown off. Would that be the case with Gliese 581 g? Or is it far enough away from its parent star so that wouldn't happen?
TIA!
sderamus
But what if it had a moon? Would that "unlock" it and allow it to rotate like the earth? I don't understand the details of the physics of tidally locking well enough to answer it, but intuitively it seems like it ought to.
I was reading that moons around our gas planets don't have moonlets because the gravitational pull of the close giant would disrupt their orbits so much that a moonlet would just get thrown off. Would that be the case with Gliese 581 g? Or is it far enough away from its parent star so that wouldn't happen?
TIA!
sderamus