New Horizons images of Arrokoth show building blocks for planets

[Zorro]

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past a city-sized object just over a year ago. The most distant object ever explored, since named Arrokoth, was a “planetesimal” lurking quietly in the outer solar system a billion miles past Pluto. The spacecraft beamed back images of what looked like two lumpy, reddish snowballs, one larger than the other, gently pressed together to form an extraterrestrial snowperson.

On Thursday the New Horizons scientists published their full analysis and high-resolution images of Arrokoth in three voluminous reports in the journal Science. They contend this quirky object provides compelling evidence for how planets in our solar system, including Earth, formed four and a half billion years ago from a primordial cloud of dust. The reports suggest planet formation is not as violent and chaotic a process as once assumed.

Arrokoth is a fossil. It has not changed for billions of years. It has been immaculately preserved, like an insect trapped in amber, in a cold, dim, stupendously serene realm of the solar system where nothing much happens, ever.

“This is the best archaeological dig we’ve ever found into the history of the solar system,” enthused Alan Stern, the scientific leader of the New Horizons team.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/new-horizons-images-of-arrokoth-show-building-blocks-for-planets/2020/02/13/3ba09220-4dba-11ea-b721-9f4cdc90bc1c_story.html

[JHB]

1. Space AND snowmen?

Photoshoppers, rev up your apps! There's Calvin and Hobbs parodies awaitin'!

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. Got that pic just in time ...

It won't be long before Arrokoth, like everything else, will become part of a black hole. When the last two black holes of the Universe merge, we'll get another big bang.

Who's bringing the popcorn?

[not_the_one]

5. Given the infinity of time and space...

it will be "just another" big bang.

Black holes are cosmic vacuums. They clean up, explode, and start the process again. That cycle is infinite, too. SINCE it is infinite, we will never have to address the chicken or the egg quandary.

A trillion, trillion, trillion light years from here (give or take), the same thing is happening, over and over, just like it is ANOTHER trillion, trillion, trillion light years from THERE.

Infinity is a hard concept to grasp. I'm working on it.

That is my hypothesis. Prove me wrong.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

6. space, time and light are all bent out of shape

A sphere looks infinite if it's big enough and you're inside it.

[eShirl]

3. looks like a plumbus

[Bayard]

4. Wonder if they will merge together,

Or the smaller one will break off and become a moon?