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Worldbuilding

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    $\begingroup$ You know, i feel like this is the sort of question you cannot answer analytically. And simulating 4 billion years with any precision is not really going to work either. Just from having worked with GR and how orbits evolve, i would argue it is very unlikley this is a stable configuration. The non spherical nature of the moons will interduce issues as well. A point N-Body simulation is not really going to cut it here. $\endgroup$
    – ErikHall
    Commented Jul 6, 2023 at 12:53
  • $\begingroup$ @ErikHall - I'm not sure there's any reason to believe it would be especially more unstable than Jupiter's Galilean moons, since it's mostly just a mass scaled equivalent and the moons are a decent multiple of their mutual hill spheres. I was more wondering if there was ballpark answer to how quickly small moons should be repelled by tidal forces. If the moon is ~180+ times more massive than these moons, is the magnitude of the tidal force squared that value or something else. Does a moon half the mass (ceteris paribus) get repelled at half the rate? What is the relevant formula here? $\endgroup$
    – Axion
    Commented Jul 14, 2023 at 16:47
  • $\begingroup$ its a gut feeling as i said. You used Newtonian point simulations which will just not capture the gravitational effects the bodies exert on each other. Especially over such a long timescale. And there is some evidence for this. All planets came from debris clouds. Yet almost non of the rocky ones have small moons of your size. Could be evidence, could be coincidence. We would need to run an actual simulation to know the answer. $\endgroup$
    – ErikHall
    Commented Jul 14, 2023 at 17:37
  • $\begingroup$ Tidal forces are not equivalent and; especially with 4 bodies effecting tides (5 technically, but solar-linked tides are so minuscule in comparison that it's probably not worth calculating) Closer-in objects will have a greater tidal affect than those further out and larger objects more than smaller ones; so In General; if you have a large body that's close in; it will have massive tides vs a smaller body at the same distance $\endgroup$
    – Raisus
    Commented Aug 17, 2023 at 7:53