Astronomers believe our moon could soon become a planet called ‘ploonet’

Astronomers have recently proposed new type of worlds to be a thing called ‘ploonets’, which are actually former moons that became a planet, and they believe our moon could soon become one too.

An international team of researchers have put forward a new hypothetical kind of world dubbed ‘ploonet’ – a former moon that escaped its host planet’s orbit and began circling the host star indeed, hence itself becoming a planet.

The team believes that our moon too will not always be attached to Earth’s orbit and could become a ploonet some day, explaining numerous bizarre astronomical phenomena, wrote Futurism.

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The team created simulations of what can happen if a hot Jupiter – class of exoplanets that orbit extremely close to their host stars – began migration with an exomoon in its pull. As per the simulations, around 48% of the exomoons would detach from their hot Jupiters and start orbiting their stars, becoming ploonets.

An icy moon’s water could evaporate as it escapes its planet’s orbit and moves toward its star, for instance, hence giving the ploonet a comet-like tail. This passage of such a ploonet across its star might explain why some stars appear to flicker.

Also, a ploonet that ultimately crashed into its former host could produce debris that can explain the strange rings found around some exoplanets. “Those structures [rings and flickers] have been discovered, have been observed,” researcher Mario Sucerquia told Science News. “We just propose a natural mechanism to explain [them].”

The simulations also showed that ploonets have short lives, roughly 50% of them crash into the star or former host planet within half a million years, while others can die in less than a million years, which explains why haven’t we found any of the ploonets till yet.

Talking about Earth’s moon, Sucerquia believed that it ‘is a potential ploonet’ given that it moves about 4cm farther away from Earth each year. However, it would still take about five billion years for our moon to become a ploonet.