On a frigid orbit beyond Neptune, some of the solar system’s smallest worlds project a strange silhouette. Two rounded lobes, ...

In A Nutshell Arrokoth, a snowman-shaped object billions of miles from Earth, is one of the oldest and least-disturbed relics of the early solar system Scientists have long debated whether its two ...

Researchers simulated how gravitational collapse forms two-lobed contact binaries in the Kuiper Belt without destructive collisions.

Scientists have long know many objects floating at the solar system's out edges resemble snowmen, but the reasons why were never clear. Now a student at Michigan State University has created the first ...

Research adds weight to theory Arrokoth’s two lobes produced by gravitational collapse – and reveals process It is the most distant and primitive object ever visited by a spacecraft from Earth: now ...

A new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society argues the simplest answer may work: contact binaries like Arrokoth can form directly during the gravitational collapse of a dense ...