🚀 go-pugleaf

The following problem appears in many books on elementary physics,
elementary electromagnetism, and elementary circuit theory:

Two capacitors, with capacitances C1 and C2 respectively, carry
charges Q1 and Q2 respectively.  Find the total energy stored.
Now connect the positive plates and connect the negative plates.
Show that the total energy stored decreases.  Where has the
energy gone? 

The energy calculations are trivial.  What intrigues me is the
question of the lost energy.  The answer usually given is that
a current flows when the capacitors are connected, and this
causes energy to be dissipated as heat.  However, suppose we
idealize the problem and assume zero resistance.  Surely energy
is still lost somehow.  How do we explain this?

My own tentative explanations include:

1. It is meaningless to "idealize" the problem by assuming zero
   resistance, because then an infinite current would flow.

2. Charge would move from the plates of the capacitor that was
   initially at the higher potential to the other capacitor, but
   would not stop flowing the instant that the voltages equalized.
   Instead, it would "overshoot" and charge would keep flowing,
   although it would be slowed down by the opposing voltage.
   Eventually the current would stop, and then it would reverse.
   We would get an alternating current.  Eventually the energy
   would get dissipated via electromagnetic radiation emitted by
   the accelerating charges.  (The analogy of a pendulum slowed
   down by friction seems appropriate.)

Any ideas, anyone?
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