Scientists have discovered a new type of planetary collision called “kiss-and-capture,” where Pluto and proto-Charon briefly ...
Pluto may have got romantic to capture its largest moon, colliding and engaging in a passionate but icy 10 hour kiss with ...
Recent simulations link the creation of Pluto and its moon Charon to a colossal impact, akin to the Earth-Moon origin, ...
Researchers accounted for the previously overlooked structures of the dwarf planet and moon in computer simulations of a ...
As the gatekeepers to the Kuiper Belt, Charon and Pluto are a unique double dwarf planet system. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it ...
Charon also has an abnormally circular orbit of Pluto, with its orbital eccentricity (a value between 0 and 1, where 0 is a perfect circle and 1 is an open-ended parabola) only being about 0.000161.
Pluto and Charon’s meet-cute may have started with a kiss. New computer simulations of the dwarf planet and its largest moon suggest that the pair got together in a “kiss-and-capture ...
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"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!" New ...
Pluto and its moon Charon may have been briefly locked together in a cosmic “kiss”, before the dwarf planet released the smaller body and recaptured it in its orbit. Charon is the largest of ...
New research suggests that Pluto may have acquired its most massive moon, Charon, through an ancient grazing impact, which the science team refers to as a “kiss and capture”. The study uses ...