{"id":9808,"date":"2026-02-19T15:40:31","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T20:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9808"},"modified":"2026-02-19T15:42:52","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T20:42:52","slug":"why-some-objects-in-space-look-like-snowmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9808","title":{"rendered":"Why Some Objects in Space Look Like Snowmen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Gravitational collapse may explain the origin of contact binaries in the Kuiper Belt, MSU simulation finds<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 700px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/mediasvc.eurekalert.org\/Api\/v1\/Multimedia\/4c440700-64f1-4753-8aea-1895911c8fa5\/Rendition\/low-res\/Content\/Public\" width=\"700\" height=\"700\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This image was taken by NASA&#8217;s New Horizons spacecraft on Jan. 1, 2019 during a flyby of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, informally known as Ultima Thule. It is the clearest view yet of this remarkable, ancient object in the far reaches of the solar system \u2013 and the first small &#8220;KBO&#8221; ever explored by a spacecraft.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their creation.<\/p>\n<p>Far beyond the violent, chaotic asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter lies what\u2019s known as the Kuiper Belt. There, past Neptune, you\u2019ll find icy, untouched building blocks from the dawn of the solar system, known as planetesimals. About one in 10 of these objects are contact binaries, planetesimals that are shaped like two connected spheres, much like Frosty the Snowman. But just how these objects came to be without the help of a magic silk hat was an open question.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/directory.natsci.msu.edu\/directory\/Profiles\/Person\/101137\">Jackson Barnes<\/a>, an MSU graduate student, has created the first simulation that reproduces the two-lobed shape naturally with gravitational collapse. His work is <a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/mnras\/article\/546\/4\/stag002\/8488819\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published<\/a> in the&nbsp;<em>Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier computational models treated colliding objects as fluid blobs that merged into spheres, making it impossible to form these unique shapes. Thanks to MSU\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/icer.msu.edu\/\">Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research<\/a>, or ICER, and its high-performance computing cluster, Barnes\u2019 simulations produce a more realistic environment that allows objects to retain their strength and rest against one another.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flex-video widescreen youtube\"><iframe title=\"NASA&#039;s New Horizons spacecraft Obeserves Ultima Thule (Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xex3L_N5iPw?feature=oembed&#038;showinfo=0&#038;rel=0&#038;modestbranding=1&#038;iv_load_policy=3&#038;playsinline=1&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" data-load-mode=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Other formation theories involve special events or exotic phenomena that, while possible, aren\u2019t likely to happen on a regular basis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we think 10 percent of planetesimal objects are contact binaries, the process that forms them can\u2019t be rare,\u201d said Earth and Environmental Science Professor&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/directory.natsci.msu.edu\/directory\/Profiles\/Person\/101226\">Seth Jacobson<\/a>, senior author on the paper. \u201cGravitational collapse fits nicely with what we\u2019ve observed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Contact binaries were first imaged up close by NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft in January 2019. These images prompted scientists to take another look at other objects in the Kuiper belt, and it turned out that contact binaries accounted for about 10 percent of all planetesimals. These distant objects float mostly undisturbed and safe from collisions in the sparsely populated Kuiper belt.<\/p>\n<p>In the early days of the Milky Way, the galaxy was a disc of dust and gas. Remnants of the galaxy\u2019s formation are found in the Kuiper Belt, including dwarf planets like Pluto, comets and planetesimals.<\/p>\n<p>Planetesimals are the first large planetary objects to form from the disc of dust and pebbles. Much like individual snowflakes that are packed into a snowball, these first planetesimals are aggregates of pebble-sized objects pulled together by gravity from a cloud of tiny materials.<\/p>\n<p>Occasionally as the cloud rotates, it falls inward on itself, ripping the object apart and forming two separate planetesimals that orbit one another. Astronomers observe many binary planetesimals in the Kuiper belt. In Barnes\u2019 simulation, the orbits of these objects spiral inward until the two gently make contact and fuse together while still maintaining their round shapes.<\/p>\n<p>How do these two objects stay together throughout the history of the solar system? Barnes explains they\u2019re simply unlikely to crash into another object. Without a collision, there\u2019s nothing to break them apart. Most binaries aren\u2019t even pocked with craters.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists long suspected that gravitational collapse was responsible for forming these objects, but they couldn\u2019t fully test the idea. Barnes\u2019 model is the first to include the physics needed to reproduce contact binaries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re able to test this hypothesis for the first time in a legitimate way,\u201d Barnes said. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s so exciting about this paper.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Barnes expects his model will help scientists understand binary systems of three or more objects. The team is also working to create a new simulation that better models the collapse process.<\/p>\n<p>As more NASA missions explore uncharted realms of the solar system, Jacobson and Barnes suspect Frosty may have more distant cousins yet to be found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gravitational collapse may explain the origin of contact binaries in the Kuiper Belt, MSU simulation finds Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their creation. Far beyond the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":9811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mediasvc.eurekalert.org\/Api\/v1\/Multimedia\/4c440700-64f1-4753-8aea-1895911c8fa5\/Rendition\/low-res\/Content\/Public","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9808"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9812,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9808\/revisions\/9812"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}