The newfound understanding of Pluto’s formative years is a reminder that in science as in life, change is messy, complicated — and inevitable.
Jan 8, 2025 06:59 IST First published on: Jan 8, 2025 at 06:59 IST
In the cold depths of the solar system, a love story has been quietly unfolding, resulting in a striking celestial pairing: Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. A new theory, published in the journal Nature GeoScience, suggests that Charon was born of a violent collision between Pluto and the largest of its five known moons. In what experts have called a “kiss-and-capture” event, the two moved together in a brief cosmic ballet before breaking apart, each holding on to a bit of the other. Together, the two would go on to upend conventions and forge a relationship of their own: Unlike Earth, whose moon orbits the planet, Pluto and Charon orbit each other in the Kuiper Belt.
Romantics would say it is the perfect fairy tale, the physics behind their cosmic relationship mirroring the complexity of human love, the delicate balance between attraction, distance and the quirky hand of fate. But Pluto’s life has been anything but conventional. Once the ninth planet, Pluto was cast out and demoted to dwarf planet status in 2006 after the International Astronomical Union redefined what constitutes a planet. But since then, Pluto has had a resurgence of sorts. In 2015, the New Horizons mission by NASA sent back breathtaking images of its surface, revealing a world of unexpected complexity: Ice mountains, nitrogen glaciers, a distinctive heart-shaped region astronauts informally named the Tombaugh Regio, and a rarefied atmosphere. Previously perceived to be a distant, bland and barren rocky surface, the mission brought to vivid life Pluto’s distinctive personality — rich in geological activity and mysteries waiting to be unravelled.
The newfound understanding of Pluto’s formative years is a reminder that in science as in life, change is messy, complicated — and inevitable. But, like the cosmic forces that shaped Pluto’s relationship with its moon, it often leads to something beautiful, something enduring — a connection that is, against all odds, meant to last.
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