What critical information about accretion processes did the New Horizons flyby of Arrokoth provide?
Answer
Its highly irregular shape, resembling two stuck cosmic snowballs, offers direct evidence of gentle accretion.
The flyby of Arrokoth (formerly Ultima Thule) by the New Horizons mission was paramount because it provided scientists with the first close-up view of a truly primordial object from the outer solar system that has remained relatively unchanged. Arrokoth possesses a highly irregular, bilobed shape, described as two cosmic snowballs joined together. This shape directly suggests that the initial planetesimals of the outer solar system likely formed through gentle, low-velocity accretion processes, where smaller bodies slowly stuck together rather than colliding destructively.
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