Pluto likely acquired large moon Charon in a “kiss and capture” collision billions of years ago. It may have created a subsurface ocean on the icy dwarf planet.

Scientists have discovered a new type of planetary collision called “kiss-and-capture,” where Pluto and proto-Charon briefly ...

The study suggests that the existing model for the formation of Earth’s moon doesn’t perfectly apply to Pluto and Charon. Pluto and Charon are smaller and colder. These are composed of rock ...

But Pluto and Charon are different from Earth and the Moon, too – they are both smaller (the Moon is 3,475 kilometers across) and much, much colder, made up of rock and ice. When the researchers ...

Images) Researchers studying Pluto and Charon have long drawn a parallel to how Earth got its moon. The prevailing thought is that a Mars-sized body collided with Earth around 4.5 billion years ...

"We were definitely surprised by the 'kiss' part of kiss-and-capture. There hasn't really been a kind of impact before where the two bodies only temporarily merge before re-separating!" ...

"It's half Pluto's size and 12% of its mass, which makes it much more similar to the Earth's moon than any other moon in the solar system." For comparison, our moon is just a quarter of the size ...

“The only comparable system is Earth and its moon.” Charon is about 750 miles across, while Pluto is nearly 1,500 miles in diameter. That proportion in sizes suggests that a number of ...

A new study has proposed that Pluto captured Charon via a 'kiss'—rather than a catastrophic collision like the one that formed Earth's moon. Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. A new study has ...

Pluto-Charon formation scenario mimics Earth-Moon system. ScienceDaily . Retrieved January 30, 2025 from www.sciencedaily.com / releases / 2025 / 01 / 250107140904.htm ...

And the new research may offer evidence for a subsurface ocean beneath Pluto’s icy crust. Charon and Earth’s moon are both a large fraction of the size of the main body they orbit, which is ...