One 'Oddball' Among 12 Newfound Moons Discovered Orbiting Jupiter

Scientists searching for Planet Nine made an interesting discovery: 12 new moons orbiting the largest planet in our solar system, gas-giant Jupiter. One of the moons seems hell-bent on wreaking havoc on the other 78 moons by driving in the wrong lane directly into oncoming traffic!

SPACE.COM SOURCE ARTICLE

Scientists have discovered 12 previously unknown moons orbiting Jupiter, and one of them is a real oddball. While hunting for the proposed Planet Nine, a massive planet that some believe could lie beyond Pluto, a team of scientists, led by Scott Sheppard from the Carnegie Institution for Science, found the 12 moons orbiting Jupiter. With this discovery, Jupiter now has a staggering 79 known orbiting moons — more than any other planet in the solar system.

Scientists have discovered 12 previously unknown moons orbiting Jupiter, and one of them is a real oddball. While hunting for the proposed Planet Nine, a massive planet that some believe could lie beyond Pluto, a team of scientists, led by Scott Sheppard from the Carnegie Institution for Science, found the 12 moons orbiting Jupiter. With this discovery, Jupiter now has a staggering 79 known orbiting moons — more than any other planet in the solar system. Advertisement Of the 12 newly discovered moons, 11 are "normal," according to a statement from the Carnegie Institution for Science. The 12th moon, however, is described as "a real oddball," because of its unique orbit and because it is also probably Jupiter's smallest known moon, at less than 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in diameter, Sheppard said in the statement.

The newly discovered "oddball" moon has a prograde orbit, but it orbits farther from Jupiter than the other moons in the larger prograde group and it takes about one and a half Earth years to complete an orbit. The satellite's oddness comes from its tiny size and the fact that, although it's out in the realm of the retrograde moons, it's orbiting in the opposite direction to them. Researchers have proposed naming the "oddball" Valetudo, after the Roman goddess of health and hygiene. Valetudo is more than just the odd moon out; it's also a serious collision hazard. Because it's orbiting in the opposite direction of the nine "new" retrograde moons, and across their paths, there is a high risk that it will hit one of them, according to the statement.

a reply to: seattlerat

Great thread and, to date, the greatest ending to a thread IMO

a reply to: seattlerat

Wonder how long its been there , I suppose there's a lot of space around Jupiter but even so if it's been there a while it's either very lucky or under intelligent control , not sayin it's Aliens but ...

a reply to: seattlerat

There has been a war of the gods between Jupiter & Saturn for many years



"All these worlds are yours except
Europa attempt no landing there"



The Ringmakers Of Saturn






en.wikipedia.org...

I like the picture of Oddjob (actor Harold Sakata) but he was no Oddball. That was Donald Sutherland in Clint Eastwood's "Kelly's Heroes".

originally posted by: seattlerat

Interesting that the rotations are grouped by direction in bands of retrograde and prograde. I always wondered about Jupiter's retrograde moons yet I never thought they were grouped together like that. Maybe this is a clue of their origin, especially the "Oddball" moon. If it hasn't collided by now, transferring its motion into retrograde with the other satellites, than its either impossibly lucky or fairly new I would think.

originally posted by: Devino

originally posted by: seattlerat

Interesting that the rotations are grouped by direction in bands of retrograde and prograde. I always wondered about Jupiter's retrograde moons yet I never thought they were grouped together like that. Maybe this is a clue of their origin, especially the "Oddball" moon. If it hasn't collided by now, transferring its motion into retrograde with the other satellites, than its either impossibly lucky or fairly new I would think.

Probably a relatively new capture. Because in that crowded neighborhood, you'd think it would have slammed into one of the other moons by now if it had been around for a long time.

a reply to: seattlerat


And they want me to believe that we know that there is no ET life forms in the universe and claim to have all the answers to stuff happening billions of light years away and we don't even know what is in our solar system

originally posted by: norhoc
a reply to: seattlerat


And they want me to believe that we know that there is no ET life forms in the universe and claim to have all the answers to stuff happening billions of light years away and we don't even know what is in our solar system

What a strawman.

When has NASA (or almost any scientist in the past couple of decades) said that there are no ET life forms? If you spoke with a NASA scientist, and virtually every other scientist, they will tell you that they think other life almost surely does exist elsewhere in the universe. Granted, they would tell you there's no proof yet, but they would also probably tell you that they feel that size and scope of the universe, plus what we know about life's tenaciousness, would make life elsewhere a virtual certainty.

You do know that NASA actively (and officially) has programs that look for other signs of life in the universe. There are people on staff at NASA who do mainstream science that look for life. NASA's Kepler telescope actively looked for planets that could possibly be habitable for life as we know it. One of the missions of NASA's new James Webb telescope is to hopefully be able to detect chemical signatures that could be life in the atmospheres of exoplanets

And of course NASA knows it doesn't have all the answers. If it did think it had all the answers, it would stop looking for them.

a reply to: seattlerat

wow!

Who knows what we might find on those new moons.

I will be having sweet sweet dreams with a night sky with up to 79 moons now.

Thank you.

-Alee

It is strange to me that all the moon's close to the planet travel prograde, with the rotation of the planet, but all of the outer moons travel in retrograde, except this one.

All or most of the retrograde moons must be captured then...? While the inner prograde moons must be mostly original planetary disc remnants...?

Maybe something about Jupiter's motion through the solar system makes it much easier for a retrograde capture to occur.



Something else I found even more interesting, is the "Jupiter's Trojans and Greeks", the huge collection of asteroids that have collected up within Jupiter's L4 and L5 Lagrange Points.

Lookup an image search for Lagrange Points or Lagrangian Points if you are lost.

I thought, wow, so, Saturn, being massive in size as well, must have its own "trojans" and "greeks" (named so after the Trojan war, since the great clumps of asteroids resemble armies waiting across the battlefield from each other).

Not so. Saturn has only a very small amount. Like literally 4 or 5 detected so far.

But wait a minute... Saturn is further out than Jupiter. Any incoming objects would have to make it past Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn, along with their corresponding LPoints(which obviously are not impenetrable barriers, but they do collect stray objects) in order to make it to Jupiter's L4&5 points.

I have two hypothesese...

1) Jupiter is so massive, it's gravitational pull steals most of Saturn's Trojans and Greeks as it passes.

2) Saturn (and perhaps Uranus and/or Neptune) Is a relatively new member to our solar system.

a reply to: 3n19m470
I'd say Jupiter's trojans and greeks came from the main asteroid belt, which is between Jupiter and Mars.

The asteroid environment between Jupiter and the main belt is very dynamic, actually: www.exploremars.org...

With Lagrangian points other stable patterns are possible, and so happen. A stable 3:2 resonance pattern of asteroids whose motion gets confined to a basically triangular shape by the combined pull of Jupiter and the Sun. Around Jupiter this group of asteroids is called the Hilda Family, and their route forms a triangle with its three points at the two Lagrange points and at the point on Jupiter’s orbit directly opposite it from the Sun.

None of these orbits are perfectly stable, because each of these asteroids is subject to pulling from everything in the Solar System; as a result, an asteroid can shift from the Lagrange points to the Hilda family, and from the Hilda family to the Asteroid Belt, especially if it runs into something and changes its course.