Origin
Proteus, like the other inner satellites of Neptune, is unlikely to be an original body that formed with it, more probably having accreted from the wreak rubble that remained after Triton's capture. Triton's orbit upon capture would have been highly eccentric, and would have caused chaotic perturbations in the orbits of the original inner Neptunian satellites, causing them to collide and reduce to a disc of rubble. Only after Triton's orbit became circularised did some of the rubble disc re-accrete into the present-day satellites.
Read more about this topic: Proteus (moon)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)