Simple collapse may build cosmic snowman worlds

New York (SDX) Feb 23, 2026

Astronomers have puzzled over why many icy worlds in the distant Kuiper Belt look like snowmen, with two round lobes joined together. New work from Michigan State University points to a surprisingly simple explanation: these so called contact binaries can form directly through gravitational collapse.

Far beyond Neptune, the Kuiper Belt holds icy, largely untouched planetesimals that preser