Planets, satellites, asteroids, comets, solar system, sizes of planets, Mercury, Venus, earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. On the origin of satellites of planets and asteroids Satellites and asteroids

The sun and the celestial bodies revolving around it under the influence of gravity form the solar system. In addition to the Sun itself, it includes 9 main planets, thousands of minor planets (more often called asteroids), comets, meteorites and interplanetary dust.

The 9 main planets (in order of distance from the Sun): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. They are divided into two groups:

Closer to the Sun are the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars); they are medium in size, but dense, with a hard surface; since their formation they have come a long way of evolution;

small and they do not have a hard surface; their atmosphere consists mainly of hydrogen and helium.

Pluto stands apart: small and at the same time of low density, it has an extremely elongated orbit. It is quite possible that it was once a satellite of Neptune, but as a result of a collision with some celestial body it “gained independence.”

solar system

The planets around the Sun are concentrated in a disk with a radius of about 6 billion km - light travels this distance in less than 6 hours. But comets, according to scientists, come to visit us from much more distant lands. The closest star to the Solar System is at a distance of 4.22 light years, i.e. almost 270 thousand times further from the Sun than the Earth.

Numerous family

The planets dance their round dance around the Sun, accompanied by satellites. Today, there are 60 known natural satellites in the Solar System: 1 near the Earth (Moon), 2 near Mars, 16 near Jupiter, 17 near Saturn, 15 near Uranus, 8 near Neptune and 1 near Pluto. 26 of them were discovered from photographs taken from space probes. The largest moon, Ganymede, orbits Jupiter and is 5,260 km in diameter. The smallest ones, no larger than a rock, are about 10 km across. The closest to its planet is Phobos, which orbits Mars at an altitude of 9380 km. The farthest away satellite is Sinope, whose orbit passes at an average distance of 23,725,000 km from Jupiter.

Since 1801, thousands of minor planets have been discovered. The largest of them is Ceres, with a diameter of only 1000 km. Most asteroids are located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, at a distance from the Sun 2.17 - 3.3 times greater than that of the Earth. However, some of them have very elongated orbits and can pass close to Earth. Thus, on October 30, 1937, Hermes, a small planet with a diameter of 800 m, passed only 800,000 km from our planet (which is only 2 times the distance to the Moon). More than 4 thousand asteroids have already been included in astronomical lists, but every year observers discover more and more.

Comets, when they are far from the Sun, have a nucleus several kilometers across, consisting of a mixture of ice, rocks and dust. As it approaches the Sun, it heats up and gases escape from it, carrying dust particles with it. The core is enveloped in a luminous halo, a kind of “hair”. The solar wind flutters this “hair” and pulls it away from the Sun in the form of a gas tail, thin and straight, sometimes hundreds of millions of kilometers long, and a dust tail, wider and more curved. Since ancient times, the passage of about 800 different comets has been recorded. There may be up to a thousand billion of them in a wide ring at the borders of the solar system.

Finally, rocky or metallic bodies—meteorites and meteoric dust—circulate between the planets. These are fragments of asteroids or comets. When they enter the Earth's atmosphere, they burn up, sometimes, though not completely. And we see a falling star and hurry to make a wish...

Comparative sizes of planets

As they move away from the Sun there are: Mercury (diameter about 4880 km), Venus (12,100 km), Earth (12,700 km) with its satellite Moon, Mars (6,800 km), Jupiter (140,000 km), Saturn (120,000 km), Uranus (51,000 km), Neptune (50,000 km) and finally Pluto (2,200 km). The planets closest to the Sun are much smaller than those located beyond the asteroid belt, with the exception of Pluto.

Three amazing satellites

Large planets are surrounded by numerous satellites. Some of them, photographed close-up by the American Voyager probes, have an amazing surface. Thus, Neptune’s satellite Triton (1) at the south pole has a cap of icy nitrogen and methane, from which nitrogen geysers erupt. Io (2), one of Jupiter's four main moons, is covered in many volcanoes. Finally, the surface of Uranus's satellite Miranda (3) is a geological mosaic composed of faults, slopes, meteorite impact craters and huge ice flows.

ON THE QUESTION OF THE ORIGIN OF SATELLITES OF PLANETS AND ASTEROIDS.
In general, the interesting and informative article by N. Garkavy and Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences V. Prokofieva-Mikhailovskaya “Double asteroids and the loneliness of the Moon” in the journal “Science and Life”, 2015, No. 11, pp. 44-52) is not free from contradictions. Let's look at some of them.
“The Moon was formed.. at a distance of 3-4 planetary radii (about 19,000 kilometers - A.M.) .. thanks to many.. weak collisions that threw part of the matter from the earth’s mantle into the proto-lunar disk.. and only then moved further away 60 radii of the Earth (384,400 kilometers - A.M.) ... The Moon is still moving away from the Earth at a speed of 4 centimeters per year.” (page 52).
Neglecting the time required for the formation of the Moon according to this theory (at least several million years) and the fact that the initial speed of the Moon’s recession has increased to the current 4 centimeters per year, and taking it constant, we obtain the maximum possible distance during the existence of the Earth (about 4.6 billion years) Moons are 184,000 kilometers (4,600,000,000 years x 0.00004 km). That is, at the time of its origin, the Moon was at a distance of 200,400 km from the Earth. = 384,400 -184,000, which is 31-32 Earth radii, and not 3-4 as the authors of the article believe. To remove the Moon by 56 Earth radii (358,400 kilometers) after its formation under the above conditions would require about 9 billion years, which is almost twice the generally accepted time of the Earth's existence.
These facts give rise to doubts about the realism of the multi-impact model of the formation of the Moon promoted by the authors, since the radius of the geostationary orbit, where the centrifugal force is balanced by the gravitational force of the Earth, is only 35,786 kilometers.
I dare to propose a model of the almost simultaneous formation of the Earth and the Moon from one protoplanetary cloud with two accretion centers at a distance of about 200,000 kilometers from each other, which does not contradict the currently known facts. If there is only one accretion center in a protoplanetary cloud, a planet without a satellite is formed. For example, Venus or Mercury. There may well be several accretion centers in protoplanetary clouds. Then, the planets formed from them will have, respectively, several satellites: Jupiter, for example, has four of them, and Pluto has five.
N. Garkavy and V. Prokofieva-Mikhailovskaya see and note the shortcomings of the mega-impact model of the formation of asteroid satellites: “.. the most important drawback of the mega-impact theory (the formation of satellites due to the collision of comparable masses / from 10 to 45% / of cosmic bodies A.M.) in that it does not in any way explain the emergence of many thousands of satellites around asteroids with weak gravity, unable to hold debris from a strong impact near the central body. In addition, such a number of collisions of bodies of comparable mass is simply statistically incredible.” (page 51).
But the multi-impact model, of which they are proponents, also sins in the same way: “...the probability of the presence of a satellite confidently increases with increasing speed of rotation of the asteroid; it (probability - A.M.) is large for small and large asteroids and minimal for medium-sized asteroids” (p. 47). However, if the satellites of asteroids are formed from rocks of their surface layer, knocked out as a result of bombardment by micrometeorites, then at the same rotation speed the possibility of retaining bombardment fragments in their gravitational field for medium-sized asteroids is certainly higher than for small asteroids, and, therefore, should be greater and the likelihood of satellites; if the asteroid and its satellites are formed simultaneously from a single protoasteroid cloud, then the absence of a satellite or satellites for a particular medium-sized asteroid means the presence of only one accretion center in the protoasteroid cloud.
The statement that the multi-impact (multi-impact) model of the formation of asteroid satellites explains the loss of mass of the asteroid belt is also very controversial, because the mechanism of satellite formation described in the article illustrates only the redistribution of matter between asteroids and their satellites within the asteroid belt. The authors themselves write that: “Asteroid satellites are self-organizing structures that grow by feeding on dust flying away from asteroids. ... the emergence of numerous asteroid satellites (which received this lost mass).”
The model I proposed for the simultaneous formation of planets and their satellites from single protoplanetary clouds with several accretion centers, and asteroids and their satellites from single protoasteroid clouds also with several accretion centers, claims to be the main (most widespread) one, as it is most consistent with the currently known facts , but does not exclude the fundamental possibility of the formation of satellites around planets and asteroids in some cases according to the multi-impact and mega-impact models.
November 16, 2015 Alexander Malchukov.

Reviews

You write interestingly about asteroids and satellites.
I'm more interested in their mineral composition. Many have a crystalline structure and are similar to earthly basalts, gabbros, and diorites, but they do not contain granites. I saw thin sections of iron-nickel meteorites. They have a Widmanstätt texture - almost perpendicularly intersecting strokes. This is a sign of a very long, slow solidification of the original melt (millions of years).
The conclusion to everything is that asteroids and meteorites are fragments of planets with an initial internal molten composition and with a long period of solidification and crystallization of minerals and rocks inside them. This conclusion is not new; the presence of Phaeton is assumed between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroid belts could be captured by the Sun from deep space.
How do you suppose - how could crystalline structures form in asteroids and meteorites?

After the big bang, if there was one, all matter was in a molten state and slowly (maybe millions of years) cooled. Then the legend of Phaeton becomes redundant.

You have a big mistake here. After the Big Bang, there was no matter yet - only radiation in the form of energy quanta. Then, as it cooled, the stage of formation of elementary particles from quanta began - electrons-positrons, protons-antiprotons, and then the stage of formation of atoms of matter - hydrogen and helium.
This supposedly took 1 billion years (according to Shklovsky and Ginzburg). And other atoms were formed much later - in the depths of stars and their subsequent explosion. This took several billion years.
So the substance was not in a melt anywhere in Space - the temperature there is below minus - 150 degrees. Melt of mineral matter could only occur in the interiors of planets with a diameter of at least 2000 km. There is a book - Minor Planets.

What exploded if there was no substance? And where did all these quarks, greaves, positrons, and electrons come from? And the temperature in the space engulfed by the explosion was still -273 degrees?

It was not the substance that exploded, but the “Singular Point of the Physical Vacuum” that had lost stability - such is the hypothesis. The human mind cannot understand this.

Just like that, when “geniuses” don’t know what to say, they invent “singular points,” secretly laughing at the simpletons amazed by their genius.

"Unified Theory of Matter by V. Ya. Bril."
In my opinion, this is a masterpiece of yet another nonsense from a person with little education in the natural sciences, trying to create “his own theory.” This is evidenced by the mixture of scientific terms with religion and esotericism: “kinetic (quantum) theory of gravity”, “unified theory of matter”, “fundamental strings”, “elementary particles”, soul, spirit, aura, “information field”, “world mind” ”, “field life form”. To save yourself from such a dish, I offer a remedy from REAL science:

A BRIEF DEFINITION OF SCIENTIFIC QUACKARRY.
Book counters, periodical pages, television programs, Internet sites and forums are full of anti-scientific rubbish. Sincerely sympathizing with the victims of pseudoscience and charlatanism, we will try to compile a short definition of “brechology”, like the definitions of dangerous animals and poisonous mushrooms.
FIRST ORDER SIGNS
If the publication contains the words: aura, biofield, chakra, bioenergy, panacea, energy-informational, resonant wave, psychic energy, thought form, telegony, wave genetics, wave genome, supersensible, astral, then you can be sure that you are dealing with charlatan writings.
The list can be continued, but there is little point in it. The terminology of the charlatan fraternity is constantly expanding, so orientation by “signal words” is not always sufficient for a correct assessment of the text.
SIGNS OF SECOND ORDER
This is information about the identity of the author. As a rule, the main specialty of the authors of pseudoscientific works is far from the areas of knowledge to which their opuses are devoted. I deliberately use the term “opus” (from the Latin opus - business) so as not to specify whether it is a book, an article or a television show.
The author's scientific credentials are of great interest for analysis. The more there are and the more carefully they are listed, the more careful you need to be with the text. Among real scientists, vanity is considered bad manners.

“Honorary membership” in various academies is particularly troubling due to the significant differences between a member and an honorary member.
Without a doubt, many truly outstanding people have received numerous awards. But, alas, their works are understandable only to similar professionals, and they hardly condescend to popular publications.
In the works of professionals, there is not only no self-praise, but also no mention at all of the value of this work.

Expressions like: “Our research completely changes the idea of ​​such and such”; “It has special value”; “Everything that came before us is of no value” - coupled with promises of radical changes in science, an immediate huge effect at negligible costs, with the humiliation of predecessors and competitors - are reliable symptoms of charlatanism.
The author's definition of his work as revolutionary is a very serious reason to doubt both the author's competence and the value of his creation.
SIGNS OF THE THIRD ORDER.
These signs are found, in fact, in the content of creation. Some points that relate to this section have already been mentioned above. The authors of fantasy and charlatan works are by no means interested in quickly identifying their anti-science. Some have achieved outstanding success in mimicry and are surprisingly clever at disguising the pseudoscientific nature of their creations among completely reasonable reasoning. Limiting ourselves to the framework of medicine and biology, let me remind you that in biological systems and living organisms all known physical laws operate just as strictly as in nonliving ones. Specific biological laws are no less powerful and are also not violated. Therefore, if the author seriously talks about paranormal abilities - seeing through a wall, reading letters in closed envelopes, levitation, telekinesis, reviving the dead, operations without a knife (with the removal of offal, but without a wound or scar),

The use of scientific terminology is designed not so much for the reader’s consciousness as for the hypnotizing effect of incomprehensible words that serve as a conductor of the author’s ideas into the brains of readers/listeners. The reader is simply not given time to comprehend the flow of words. He only manages to grasp individual pieces written in normal language. They also contain thoughts that, according to the author’s plan, the consumer of the product of his speculations should assimilate. In theory, one should read thoughtfully, slowly... But where is it, we are accustomed (and forcedly accustomed) to speed reading. So we swallow without chewing. This method of absorbing spiritual food is more dangerous for the brain than hasty absorption of bodily food for the stomach.
So, an increased concentration of foreign language terms where it is quite possible to get by with the words of the native language, an abundance of complex grammatical structures

SIGNAL FOR THE READER: “Make sure you don’t get into trouble!” Charlatan opuses are characterized by a lack of doubt and intolerance to objections. An undoubted sign of quackery is the lack of reaction to criticism on the merits and a shift to the personality of the opponent.
Pseudoscientific “fantasies” are characterized by universality and universality. A charlatan does not stoop to solve narrow problems. If he made a revolution in science, it was a global one. If he treats cancer with an aspen stick (by God, there is such a patent!).
If he invented a miracle diet, then it suits everyone, improves health completely and without the right to appeal. If it describes a miraculous drug, then it has no contraindications and can be given to anyone.

When the author lacks factual or logical (often both) arguments, he resorts to citing authorities. At the same time, statements and views that were completely alien to them during their lifetime are often attributed to deceased authorities. It’s a well-known fact: the dead have no shame. In such cases, familiarity with the biography of the greats allows one to reliably determine the forgery and treat the author’s creation accordingly.

If the “revolutionary teaching” offered to the consumer does not have a scientific background, this is a very, very reliable sign of brechology. Science develops progressively; the basis for new knowledge is always old, proven knowledge. If the author has no predecessors, and his “science” jumped out into the light of day like a jack-in-the-box, it is completely natural to treat it as an evil spirit. I propose to treat all kinds of “insights”, “inspirations” and other gifts of God in the same way. Any esotericism, hysteria and mysticism by their very presence in a “scientific” opus unambiguously determines its belonging to brechology.

I would call another third-order sign “unshaven according to Occam.” Occam's razor was the name given to the principle formulated back in the 14th century by the Franciscan monk William of Ockham, which states: Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate - “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” In other words, you should not come up with a complex explanation where a simple one is enough. Einstein slightly changed the wording: “Everything should be simplified as far as possible, but no more.” In pseudoscientific works this principle is not observed.
An example of a violation of Occam's principle is the discussion about the Bermuda Triangle. In an area with extremely heavy shipping, with very unstable air currents and sea currents, ships and planes disappear from time to time. Brechologists explain these disasters by the action of otherworldly forces. Accidents due to natural causes (loss of communication with the aircraft due to problems in the electrical network; falling into the sea due to navigation errors and excessive fuel consumption; death of the ship under the impact of an abnormally high single wave) are rejected in favor of beautiful and unfounded fabrications.
A simple recommendation: use common sense to distinguish between science and brechology.

If the lotteries have not yet gone bankrupt, the prophets are worthless. If there are still patients, all miraculous drugs are trash. If someone offers a miracle, he is a charlatan.
Source from the Directory: MAGAZINE "SCIENCE AND LIFE" 2005.

God, so much buffoonery and slang!
I am absolutely not going to comment on Bril’s theory from a scientific point of view, but there are no traces of “auras” or other esotericism there, everything is scientific from a person who has been involved in science all his life.

For some reason, you like Brill’s buffs and sloffs, but don’t like real science? Why would this be?
They didn’t read Bril well - there are words there: soul, spirit, aura, “information field”, “world mind”, “field life form”.
And you start talking without knowing what. This is not good. Read it again - has it been a long time since you read it?

I read it more than once, but a long time ago. In any case, there the physical picture of the world is not presented through esotericism, and the hypothesis of “elementary strings” was discussed by physicists quite seriously thirty or forty years ago.
Even if there are words about “soul”, “aura”, etc., they in no way define the main content of the text. I repeat, I do not have sufficient knowledge to discuss Brill’s hypotheses from a scientific point of view, but one should definitely not drag esotericism here by the ears.

Modern scientific theories go through the hypothesis stage with long, repeated experimental testing by the scientific community. Only after practical confirmation do they become a theory. But even after this, they continue to be subject to experimental testing and elimination of discrepancies.
And then immediately a theory based on postulates - that is, axioms from the head. The author of this “theory” writes at the end that it cannot be verified by science, but only by a higher mind. That is, he believes that his theory is above the human mind. The Internet is now filled with such fashionable “theories”. A collection of them is listed on the website scorche.ru and there is also a critical analysis of experts.

Since I regularly come across the fact that they attribute to me what I supposedly believe, then in relation to others I try not to speculate what the author believed, especially when there is a reference to a “higher mind”. With all the achievements that humanity has achieved, it seems to me that it sometimes suffers from a certain overconfidence.
I don’t want to blame anyone, but even experts are sometimes in the grip of their knowledge and experience and are not always receptive to alternative views, because then they will have to admit their own mistakes. Especially applies to the so-called. humanities. In principle, this is nothing new; it has always been like this. Of course, until a particular theory is supported by experimental material, it is not of particular interest. I repeat again that I am not speaking in defense of Bril here, but Einstein’s same theory did not immediately receive experimental confirmation, and even then the opinion about it is still ambiguous, and more than a century has passed.
For the last few decades, the LHC has been built to test some assumptions about the structure of matter, but although the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced, it was somehow unclear, and the collider itself almost burned down; it has been under repair for several years. But how many people are at work.

This is where you have a more objective view of reality. It is difficult to be objective, especially without knowledge of the basics of natural sciences. Humanists and journalists tend to believe in miracles. Even Mikhail Weller believes “in the miraculous abilities” of Chumak - he invited him to his program. Weller says, “I know physics at the level of Peryshkin’s school textbook,” and he himself undertook to create an “energy-information theory.” Do these “creators” of today have some kind of itch?
The Higgs boson fit into the hypothesis quite confidently, even Higgs himself was pleased. Two competing groups of scientists (collaborations), using different search methods, came to a consensus - the boson exists.
The power of the collider is gradually increasing and new discoveries are possible ahead. Collider is better than fiction. But they will still appear - this is how the human mind works, the unknown weighs on him and he fills this emptiness with fantasy - at best, a hypothesis. Did I write a lot of slang again?

Here you show a lack of trust in science. Naturally, everyone has the right to doubt the discoveries and laws of science. One can even doubt Newton's laws. But our everyday doubts, such as the conversation - “Are you talking about science? Something is hard to believe” cannot be compared with the doubts of a specialist. They are as different as heaven and earth.
Do you remember Chekhov’s short story “Letter to a Learned Neighbor”? There, an inquisitive neighbor doubted whether there were spots on the Sun and proved their obvious absence like this: “This cannot be, because it can never exist.”
The Higgs boson is not a theoretical invention, but it was revealed during experiments as the “missing link” in the system of elementary particles. Higgs roughly described its characteristics based on the behavior of other particles. This is very similar to the discovery of Pluto - the “missing planet” of the solar system and it was discovered according to predicted characteristics, that is, calculated.
Interpretation of scientific facts is again not an everyday matter, but purely a matter for specialists. The world community will never miss a hack, as it repeatedly checks any new facts. If there is an ambiguous interpretation, he speaks openly about it and collects new experimental data.
In just 300 years, science has led humanity from a torch and a candle to electrification, telegraph, telephone, radio, electronics, computer, information revolution, and space exploration. And still there are detractors of science and its home-grown exposers - especially among believers and esotericists, who at the same time very willingly use the benefits of science and technology.
Humans have such a contradictory nature. A psychologist's mystery?

It’s not entirely correct to talk about distrust of science in relation to me. I point out something else: you cannot fall into euphoria from the scientific data obtained and make far-reaching predictions. Firstly, it has repeatedly happened that experimental data were given a not entirely correct or complete explanation; secondly, we should not forget that each subsequent theory must include the previous one as a special case.
If we talk specifically about Newton’s laws, then we can, for example, pay attention to the following nuance.
The Law of Universal Gravitation contains a “gravitational constant” (~6.67x...). At one time, many years of experiments were carried out in order to accurately calculate its value, but in the end we can only talk about a probabilistic characteristic. I fully admit that Newton’s formula in the usual sense is valid only for relatively small masses, as stated by Brill (not the fact that this is exactly the case!).
By the way, it is interesting that for the interaction of electric charges the formula looks almost the same, only instead of the “gravitational constant” it is “dielectric” (in relation to a specific medium).

What really confuses me about the Higgs boson is its declared mass, which is many times greater than even the mass of a proton. It's strange that it wasn't opened earlier. In general, experiments at accelerators remind me of an attempt to find out, for example, how a house works by smashing it into pieces and then building a picture from the fragments.
Finally, there is a lot of evidence (especially regarding history) that does not fit into the usual ideas, but people try not to remember them so as not to confuse their minds.

(PS I am always bothered by a long exchange of opinions in the margins of other people’s reviews. If you maintain further interest in the dialogue, if you don’t mind, I suggest continuing it on my pages or, what is even more convenient, via regular e-mail.)

The daily audience of the Proza.ru portal is about 100 thousand visitors, who in total view more than half a million pages according to the traffic counter, which is located to the right of this text. Each column contains two numbers: the number of views and the number of visitors.

Objects and, they are also moons. Although most planets have moons, and some Kuiper Belt objects and even asteroids have their own moons, there are no known “moons of moons” among them. Either we were unlucky, or the fundamental and extremely important rules of astrophysics complicate their formation and existence.

When all you have to keep in mind is one massive object in space, everything seems pretty simple. will be the only work force and you will be able to place any object on a stable elliptical or circular path around it. In this scenario, it seems that he will be in his position forever. But other factors come into play here:

• the object may have some sort of diffuse “halo” of particles around it;
• the object will not necessarily be stationary, but will rotate - probably quickly - around an axis;
• this object will not necessarily be isolated as you initially thought

The tidal forces acting on the satellite are sufficient to pull out its icy crust and heat its interior, so that the subsurface ocean erupts hundreds of kilometers into space

The first factor, atmosphere, makes sense only as a last resort. Typically, an object that is orbiting a massive, solid world with no atmosphere will only need to avoid the surface of that object and it will stick around indefinitely. But if you add an atmosphere, even an incredibly diffuse one, any body in orbit will have to deal with atoms and particles surrounding the central mass.

Even though we generally believe that our atmosphere has an "end" and that at a certain altitude space begins, the reality is that the atmosphere simply depletes as you get higher and higher. The atmosphere extends for many hundreds of kilometers; It will even fall out of orbit and burn up if we don’t constantly push it. By solar system standards, a body in orbit must be a certain distance from any mass to remain “safe.”

In addition, the object can rotate. This applies to both the large mass and the smaller one revolving around the first one. There is a "stable" point where both masses are tidally locked (i.e. always facing each other on the same side), but any other configuration will produce a "torque". This torsion will either spiral both masses inward (if the rotation is slow) or outward (if the rotation is fast). On other worlds, most companions are not born under ideal conditions. But there's one more factor we need to consider before diving headfirst into the "satellite of satellites" problem.

Mercury orbits our Sun relatively quickly, and therefore the gravitational and tidal forces acting on it are very strong. If there was something else orbiting Mercury, there would be many more additional factors.

1. The "wind" from the Sun (a stream of outgoing particles) would crash into Mercury and an object near it, knocking them out of orbit.
2. The heat that the Sun imparts to Mercury's surface can cause Mercury's atmosphere to expand. Despite the fact that Mercury is airless, particles on the surface are heated and thrown into space, creating an atmosphere, albeit weak.
3. Finally, there is a third mass that wants to lead to final tidal locking: not only between the low mass and Mercury, but also between Mercury and the Sun.

Therefore, there are two extreme locations for any Mercury satellite.

Every planet that orbits a star will be most stable when it is tidally locked: when its orbital and rotational periods match. If you add another object in orbit to a planet, its most stable orbit will be tidally locked with the planet and star near the point

If the satellite is too close to Mercury for a number of reasons:

• does not rotate fast enough for its distance;
• Mercury doesn't rotate fast enough to be tidally locked with the Sun;
• susceptible to slowdown from ;
• will be subject to significant friction from the Mercury atmosphere,

it will eventually fall to the surface of Mercury.

When an object hits a planet, it can kick up debris and cause moons to form nearby. This is how the earth's Moon appeared and the satellites of Pluto also appeared.

Conversely, it risks being thrown out of Mercury's orbit if the satellite is too far away and other considerations apply:

• the satellite is spinning too fast for its distance;
• Mercury rotates too fast to be tidally locked with the Sun;
• the solar wind gives additional speed to the satellite;
• interference from other planets pushes the satellite out;
• The heating of the Sun gives additional kinetic energy to the decidedly small satellite.

With all that said, do not forget that many planets have their own satellites. Although a three-body system will never be stable unless you tailor its configuration to ideal criteria, we will be stable for billions of years under the right conditions. Here are a few conditions that will simplify the task:

1. Take a planet/asteroid so that the bulk of the system is significantly removed from the Sun, so that the solar wind, flashes of light and tidal forces of the Sun are insignificant.
2. So that the satellite of this planet/asteroid is close enough to the main body so that it does not hang around gravitationally and is not accidentally pushed out during other gravitational or mechanical interactions.
3. So that the satellite of this planet/asteroid is sufficiently distant from the main body so that tidal forces, friction or other effects do not lead to convergence and merger with the parent body.

As you might have guessed, there is a "sweet apple" in which the moon can exist near a planet: several times further than the planet's radius, but close enough that the orbital period is not too long and is still significantly shorter than the planet's orbital period relative to the star. So, taking all of this together, where are the moons of moons in our solar system?