What happens if an existing planetary system encounters a free-floating planet? Turns out there are several possibilities, including capture into high-eccentricity orbits.
Planetory Micrometeorite
Number of posts : 7 Registration date : 2012-06-11
Subject: Re: Capturing free-floating planets 12th June 2012, 3:20 pm
But, didn't we already sort of know this from theories of the capture of Neptune's largest moon, Triton? (i.e. triton was part of a binary pair that crossed Neptune. Triton was captured while the other body was flung out [Agnor and Hamilton, 2006]) Triton also has a retrograde orbit about Neptune
Lazarus dF star
Number of posts : 3337 Registration date : 2008-06-12
Subject: Re: Capturing free-floating planets 13th June 2012, 2:56 pm
Well we don't actually know the conditions of the Triton capture all that well: was Triton actually part of a binary system? (Sure it makes some things easier to explain, but how sure are we of this?)
And in any case, the existence of captured satellites merely tells us that the capture process is possible, not how probable it is...
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