• @[email protected]
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    9 days ago

    Assuming your math is correct (and I have no reason to doubt that it is) a mass of 10^16 kg would actually be a pretty small moon or moderately sized asteroid. That’s actually roughly the mass of Mars’ moon Phobos (which is the 75th largest planetary moon in the Solar System).

          • @[email protected]
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            16 days ago

            this leads to the question: are they still considered a moon when the barycenter is in the space between them?

            • @[email protected]
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              26 days ago

              There is no clear definition of what constitutes a moon other than it being a body that orbits another body that orbits the parent star.

              There are some astronomers who say the dividing line between a moon-planet/dwarf planet/asteroid system and binary (or more) planet/dwarf planet/asteroid system is whether or not the barycenter of the orbits is within one of the bodies or not.

              And fun fact: if that definition gained acceptance, it would mean that the Pluto-Charon system would go from a dwarf planet-moon system to a binary dwarf planet system. Charon could get a promotion.

    • @[email protected]
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      29 days ago

      I was thinking of 10^16kg diamond storage inside a larger SSD that’s the size of a large moon, similar to how a real SSD has data stored in tiny little slivers of silicon inside a much much larger device.

      I should have explained that one better. It’s easy to imply such details to keep text shorter.