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One of dozens of new moons discovered around Jupiter revolves around the planet in a suicidal orbit that will inevitably lead to its violent destruction, say astronomers.
US researchers stumble upon new moons in search of a ninth mysterious planet that is postulated to hide well beyond the orbit of Neptune, the planet's most distant solar system.
The team has glimpsed the moons in March of the Inter-American Observatory of Cerro Tololo in Chile. a year to confirm that the bodies were in orbit around the gas giant. "It was a long process," said Scott Sheppard, who led the effort at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC 
Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, was running out of moons before the last results. The number of Jovian moons is raised to 79, which is more than is known to encircle any other planet in our cosmic neighborhood.
Valetudo is like driving on the highway on the wrong side of the road … Scott Sheppard, Carnegie Institute for Science
Nine of the new moons belong to an external group that orients Jupiter in retrograde, which means that they travel in the opposite direction to the rotation of the planet. They are thought to be the body remains of larger parents who were broken into collisions with asteroids, comets and other moons. Each takes about two years to circle the planet.
Two other moons are part of a group that is much closer to the planet in prograde orbits that move in the same direction as the rotation of Jupiter. Probably pieces of a moon once larger that has been broken into orbit, it takes almost a year to complete a turn around Jupiter. The direction in which moons revolve around the planet depends on how they were captured for the first time by Jupiter's gravitational field.
Astronomers describe one of the new Jovian moons as an "eccentric ball". Less than a kilometer wide, the tiny body circles Jupiter on a prograde orbit but at a distance that means it crosses the path of other moons that rush toward it. Scientists have named the new moon Valetudo after the great-granddaughter of the Roman god Jupiter, the goddess of health and hygiene. But given the imminent violence, it may not be a coincidence if Vale Tudo, which means "everything is fine," is an early form of mixed martial arts of full contact. on the wrong side of the road, "said Sheppard. "He is moving prograde while all other objects at a similar distance from Jupiter are moving backwards." Sheppard, whose report appears in the International Planet Astronomer's Minor Planet's Electronic Circular, suspects Valetudo of being "in danger". be the last remnant of a formerly much larger moon that was crushed to dust by collisions in the area.
Which raises the question of how long the tiny moon has left. "Collisions do not happen so often, every billion years, "said Sheppard." If that happened, we would be able to detect it from Earth, but it is unlikely that it will happen anytime soon. "
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