| Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers Normally, multiple moons will be in nested orbits (in a musical harmonic ratio, as they stabilise their distances; how's that for "music of the spheres"?)
While it would be possible for an outer moon to have an orbit sufficiently eliptical that its perigee was lower than the apogee of the next moon in, sooner or later they would…well, possibly not collide exactly, but interact gravitationally enough to destablise each other. I doubt whether the situation would hold more than a couple of million years.
I suppose that a recently captured asteroid could show that behavior for a short period, but beware the peturbations; there's a strong risk the instability would lead to an exceedingly large lump of rock colliding with the planet, and dinosaurs would tell you (if they were here to) that this is not a comfortable situation. |