On a frigid orbit beyond Neptune, some of the solar system’s smallest worlds project a strange silhouette. Two rounded lobes, pressed together with a narrow “neck,” like a snowman that never melted.

Astronomers had decent guesses about how these peanut-shaped asteroids formed but couldn’t get the physics to work—until now. Reading time 3 minutes Arrokoth is a reddish, snowman-shaped asteroid in ...

A gentle bump goes a long way in the Kuiper Belt. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. A new study from researchers at the Southwest ...

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

Snapshots from numerical simulation of shape evolution of Arrokoth's analogue due to sublimation driven mass loss. The bottom most shape is a digital terrain model derived from New Horizon ...

A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President Dr. Alan Stern posits that the large, approximately 5-kilometer-long mounds that dominate the ...

A new study from researchers at the Southwest Research Institute has unearthed a fascinating discovery about Arrokoth, a trans-Neptunian object made famous by the New Horizons probe on New Year’s Day ...

A new study posits that the large, approximately 5-kilometer-long mounds that dominate the appearance of the larger lobe of the pristine Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth are similar enough to suggest a ...