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NASA’s Snowman Discovery Just Got a Simple Explanation
Michigan State University simulations reveal gravitational collapse forms 10% of Kuiper Belt objects as bilobate contact binaries, explaining their common snowman-like shapes.
7 Articles
7 Articles
The frozen objects of the Kuiper Belt that look like snowmen are formed by a simple process of gravitational collapse. This was determined by an investigation by the State University of Michigan (MSU) in the United States. The study was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Much beyond the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is located the Kuiper Belt. In that region, beyond Neptune, they orbit frozen and…
NASA’s Snowman Discovery Just Got a Simple Explanation
Cosmic “snowmen” in the outer solar system may form from a surprisingly simple gravitational dance. Astronomers have puzzled for years over a strange pattern in the outer solar system. A surprising number of icy bodies far beyond Neptune resemble snowmen, made of two rounded lobes stuck together. Now researchers at Michigan State University say they [...]
Some comets and also the transneptunic object Arrokoth resemble a snowman rather than a celestial body: they consist of two interlinked spheres. How such double objects arise is still unclear. Planetary researchers have now examined a possible scenario with the help of computer simulations. According to this, such so-called contact binaries can be formed by the gravitational collapse of bröckchenwolken in the early solar system [...]
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