Scientists believe that billions of years ago, Pluto may have received its largest moon, Charon, with a very brief icy “kiss.”. This theory could explain how a dwarf planet managed to capture a satellite that is about half the size of Pluto. The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience, writes Space.

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The study's authors used simulations to reveal how two icy worlds at the edge of the solar system collided billions of years ago, giving rise to Pluto's largest moon, Charon..

Scientists believe that instead of destroying each other during the collision, the two icy objects first merged into one, and then very quickly separated. At the same time, Pluto and Charon turned out to be gravitationally bound to each other.

Scientists call this process of collision between two icy bodies " Most planetary collision scenarios are classified as " Scientists say they were surprised when they received simulation results that showed this type of collision, where two bodies temporarily come together and then quickly separate..

The problem in studying the history of the appearance of Charon as a satellite of Pluto, which has been a dwarf planet for almost 20 years, and not the ninth ordinary planet of the solar system, is associated with the relatively small difference in the sizes and masses of the two bodies.

According to scientists, compared to Pluto, the moon Charon is huge. It is almost 2 times smaller than the dwarf planet, and its mass is as much as 12% of the mass of Pluto. By comparison, the Moon is only 25% the size of the Earth, and the largest moon in the solar system, Ganymede (a moon of Jupiter), is 1/28 the size of the gas giant.. The authors of the study say that Pluto could not have obtained such a large satellite in the “usual” way.. This refers to the gravitational capture of satellites, as Jupiter and Saturn did..

The main theory of Charon's formation suggests that it arose as a result of the collision of Pluto with another body. That is, it is similar to how our Moon was formed. But new modeling rejects this theory. Scientists believe that the very strong Charon, when colliding with the equally strong Pluto, could not plunge into it completely, but for a short time the two bodies were united. A new theory suggests that after a brief 10-hour “kiss,” Pluto and Charon separated and the latter ended up in orbit around the dwarf planet.. After this, Charon began to slowly move to his current location.

Scientists believe that the collision of Charon and Pluto occurred just a few tens of millions of years after the solar system was created more than 4.5 billion years ago..

The authors of the study intend to test their theory using new observations of Pluto and Charon. It is also assumed that the collision of two bodies could lead to the formation of underground oceans of liquid water inside the two objects. This also remains to be verified.

As Focus already wrote, NASA is preparing a very important statement about Mars. Perhaps the fate of the valuable cargo collected by the Perseverance rover will soon become known.

Focus also wrote that since Pluto was discovered, the dwarf planet has not yet completed a full revolution around the Sun.