The moon crashing into Earth may sound like an unrealistic doomsday scenario or the stuff of sci-fi disasters. But for some planets in other star systems, such catastrophic collisions may be common.
New research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society uses computer simulations to show that collisions between exoplanets and their moons (called exomoons) may actually be a regular occurrence, which could be disastrous for any budding alien life on those planets.
While astronomers have yet to make a confident detection of an exomoon, scientists expect them to be plentiful in the universe.
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