When Cupid and Belinda will meet, on the stage there will be more dead bodies than in the final of "hamlet". And they will meet, in this case the researchers of the orbit of Uranus no doubt.

The system of Uranium (picture Real Space).

Inner satellites of Uranus, named after the characters of Shakespeare's plays, are tightly Packed and mysterious group. They are closer to the planet and each other than any other set of satellites in the Solar system: 13 moons fit in the space of 10 thousand km

In 1997 has been hypothesized that they often bump into each other. Since then on archival images taken by the Voyager-2", and images Hubble were found three more satellites: the Perdita, Cupid and MAB. It's time again to model their movement and see what happens. Did Robert French and mark Showalter from the SETI Institute (USA).

The intrigue in this story arises from the fact that the satellites are so small and dark in our telescopes, we can judge only on their size and approximate mutual arrangement. About the masses and, consequently, the impact on the orbit each other is anyone's guess. So the modeling was very time consuming.

But it turned out that the mass is almost irrelevant - every time the orbit one, then another pair of satellites crossed in a very small time limits. The researchers came to pass that Cupid and Belinda just have to face in a thousand, or ten million years (depending on initial conditions). What happens next depends on the composition of the moons, which remains unknown. They can bounce from each other, stick together or fall apart into small pieces.

The next pair, doomed to a meeting, - Cressida and Desdemona (left from 100 thousand to 10 million years). Then Cruzdemon" crash into Juliet, and "Kuppel - Perdita (provided that in both cases initially faced satellites form a new body). After this bloody slaughter has to come a lull.

But this is only one of the options. If Cupid and Belinda just fall apart, they will form a ring, which will be drawn up for new moon. Indeed, in addition to the traditional set of rings and satellites of Uranus has a small ring in a strange place - inside the orbit of Cupid. At the same time, Cupid himself, according to the simulation results, should have a very low life expectancy, so researchers remain amazed that he still exists.

Probably, all these anomalies are explained by constant collision satellites with subsequent formation of the rings and new moons. Something similar happens in the F ring of Saturn.

With conclusions colleagues disagree Hal Levison from Southwest research Institute (USA), co-author of the model of the Solar system "nice", in which the planets appear on unstable orbits and rush at each other until they find a peaceful haven where are today. According to Mr. Levinson, in ancient times around the Sun reigned about the same chaos in the system of the Uranium today, but, as we see, everything ended well. And therefore more logical, he said, to assume that the system of Uranium have already stabilized, and the blood will be no more.

The study is published in the journal Icarus.

Prepared according to NewScientist.