Pluto and its largest moon Charon could have come together via a 10-hour ‘kiss-and-capture’ encounter after a grazing collision

Pluto's big moon Charon may have a different origin story than scientists suspected. New research suggests the two bodies engaged in a celestial kiss and tango.

"We were definitely surprised by the 'kiss' part of kiss-and-capture. There hasn't really been a kind of impact before where the two bodies only temporarily merge before re-separating!"

Overturning decades of assumptions about how Charon formed, researchers have revealed an entirely new form of cosmic collision.

Our Moon is surprisingly massive compared to Earth, but that ratio is dwarfed if we consider Pluto and Charon. The latter is about 12 percent of the mass of Pluto and technically doesn’t orbit it. The pair of them orbit around a common center of mass outside of Pluto.