Billions of years ago, in the icy outskirts of the solar system, a dramatic collision forged the unusual pairing of Pluto and ...

New research underscores the physics of potential oceans on moons like Europa and Enceladus where aliens could hide ...

Amanda Kooser covers the quirky side of science and space. Pluto has five moons, but Charon stands out from the rest. Charon is half the size of Pluto, “making it the largest known moon relative ...

This discovery comes on the heels of the 2023 detection of CO 2 on Jupiter's moon Europa, and adds a new chapter in the study ...

The love story between Pluto and Charon may have started with a kiss. A new study suggests the dwarf planet and its scarcely smaller moon likely came together in a collision that saw them conjoined ...

Instead of a catastrophic destruction, they united briefly, spinning together like a cosmic snowman. This “kiss and capture” scenario led to the formation of Pluto and its moon, Charon, as we know ...

This “kiss and capture” mechanism offers a fresh perspective on planetary formation, particularly about Pluto and its largest moon Charon. Scientists have long believed that Charon formed ...

Artist's impression of New Horizons' close encounter with the Pluto–Charon system. Credit: NASA/JHU APL/SwRI/Steve Gribben. On July 14th, 2015, the New Horizons probe made history by ...

Pluto, considered the ninth planet in our solar system until it was reclassified to dwarf planet status in 2006, is thought to have undergone an impact that broke off the largest of its five moons ...

"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 ...

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 ...

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