http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2005/19/ has three moons now! And it is not a mickey mouse story!!
If you go to the page of the discoverers http://www.boulder.swri.edu/plutonews/ Alan Stern, Hal Weaver and others, they seem to be convinced that the moons truly exist, given that the title of the page is: "Background Information Regarding Our Two Newly Discovered Satellites of Pluto" Also, regarding the possible formation of the moons: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/051031_pluto_moons.html "The leading theory for the formation of Charon involves a large object striking Pluto. The debris from that collision could have formed the two smaller moons"
Oh please, Everybody knows that Saturns moon Iapetus is really the Death Star. Silly mortals Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Mimas?! No way! It's clearly Iapetus. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Yes, you can see the mold lines where the plastic shell came out of the forges. Thats some big forges we used to make it.
How real was the perturbation of Neptune that lead to the discovery of Pluto? Cerainly belief that Neptune was perturded by "Planet X" caused the search that discovered Pluto, but facts now known: Pluto is smaller than the moon, never closer to Neptune than 17 AU, and Neptune is massive (17 time mass of Earth) show Pluto rarely has even a minor effect upon Neptune. If Neptune was perturbed, what did it? Ideas? See web page under my name for my idea of a realistic possibility.
Actually it was discovered that the first estimate of the mass of Neptune was off. As it turns out the planet is behaving exactly as it should.
It does not matter what the mass of a planet is when a gravitational perturbation is considered. Both the force on the planet and its resistance to that force (called inertia) are proportional to the mass. Neptune could be the size of a golf ball or have the mass of Jupiter and both cases would have the same acceleration, but there would be in how much the object accelerating it and Neptune moved relative to each other. (Velocity and its integration, called displacement, depend upon the reference frame being considered. If it fixed in the sun, usual case for solar objects and as there is no mass dependence of the acceleration, then wrt to sun the change in orbit does not depend on Neptune's mass as you are suggesting.) Pluto was not known at the time. Perhaps Pluto and its moons had an orbit plane like all the other planets and the unseen "massive object" is why that is no longer true. Now that it is known that pluto has three moons, it is hard to believe all four objects were "scattered" out of the ecliptic by some relatively near-by object and yet could stay together. Whatever put them in a tilted orbit plane had to be realatively massive and far away and invisible. If Neptune is much smaller than the object perturbing it, most of their relative motion would be by Neptune. That is another reason to think some massive object at considerable distance from Neptune may have disturbed it. That massive object would need to not reflect sun light as it was not seen. Certainly a small (few solar masses) black hole meets this requirement and there are more small black holes than stars. Perhaps old cold neutron star can also meet this requirement. The gravity on surface of a neutron star is very intense and thus it is very round. I doubt if the highest point on the surface is more than one or two neutrons more distant from the center than the lowest point. Thus it is "optically smooth" and then only one tiny spot on the surface would reflect light to any one spot on Earth. (Specular reflection off a perfect spherical mirror - like the "glint" of a street light off curved chrome, except that great distance to and from sun would make it "pinpoint" glint .) I have no idea what the coefficient of reflectivity of pure, dense neutrons surface is - perhaps, as they have no charge, it is essentially zero. Glass surface reflects about 4% by the discontinuity of the dielectric constant, but even glass has bound charges to make this “dielectric constant” and the neutrons do not. I.e. perhaps the dielectric constant of a neutron mass is the same as vacuum - no reflection? Several other possibilities are discussed in the my book - see web page under my name.
