"In 2021, a ring was detected around a trans-Neptunian dwarf planet,
Quaoar has a diameter of about 1,110 km, about half that of Pluto. The first ring discovered is located 4,057 km from Quaoar’s center, approximately 3 times the distance of the Roche limit, estimated to be 1,780 km from Quaoar’s center. A second ring was discovered in 2022 that is 2,520 km from Quaoar’s center, still outside the Roche limit. It has a small moon, Weywot, that is 80 km in diameter and orbits 12 times the diameter of Quaoar.
*When considering billions of years of uniformitarian time, the question is: why hasn’t the ring coalesced into a moon?
However,
the position of Quaoar’s rings is very different
from that of any comparably opaque rings,
and therefore poses a challenge to standard models
of planetary rings.
*When considering billions of years of uniformitarian time, the question is: why hasn’t the ring coalesced into a moon?
There are many possibilities. One is that the debris was caused by an impact with another object. This is considered unlikely because it is believed that only a few decades are needed for the debris to reassemble into a moon, but this deduction may rely on hypotheses on how small particles would stick together.
Other possibilities are: the particles are more elastic and bounce off each other;
the particles are moving too fast to coagulate;
external gravitational forces somehow break apart any aggregated particles;
the hypothesis that particles will quickly aggregate into larger bodies may be flawed;
there is some kind of resonance between Quaoar and/or Weymot that keeps particles from coagulating.
Morgado et al. even suggest “the need for revisiting the Roche limit
notion”, which is a strange proposal, since the Roche limit seems to be well supported physically.
Creation scientists have several options for explaining Quaoar’s strange rings.
the particles are moving too fast to coagulate;
external gravitational forces somehow break apart any aggregated particles;
the hypothesis that particles will quickly aggregate into larger bodies may be flawed;
there is some kind of resonance between Quaoar and/or Weymot that keeps particles from coagulating.
Morgado et al. even suggest “the need for revisiting the Roche limit
Creation scientists have several options for explaining Quaoar’s strange rings.
They could have been recently created, and the uniformitarian hypothesis of the quick coagulation of the particles is flawed. Another option is that an asteroid smashed into one or two moons, and there has not been enough time for the particles to re-aggregate.
It is interesting how many uniformitarian solar system conundrums there are, and that many of them can be solved by applying a recent creation."
CMI
