Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
Devac · 1960 days ago · link · · parent · post: Space fans of Hubski - Why don't moons ever have moons of their own?
It's true for anything that's not a perfect sphere or having a homogenous (the same in all directions) distribution of mass. Forgetting about things like mountain ranges and other topographical features, the simple fact that the Earth rotates makes the equatorial radius larger than the pole radius, so it's already not a perfect sphere. Then you have to account for things like continental plates being lighter than oceanic plates, which (probably) isn't as significant as the convective movement of magma below the crust (which complicates things even further).Interesting. Is this true for all moons, or just ours? Is it shape dependent, for example are the gravity fields of Mars' potato moons even lumpier?
