It took several million years for Arrokothn to acquire its bizarre, pancake-flat shape

The trans-Neptunian object Arrokoth, also known as Ultima Thule, which NASA’s space probe New Horizons passed on New Year’s Day 2019, may have changed its shape significantly in the first 100 million years since its formation. In today’s issue of the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) suggest that the current shape of Arrokoth, which resembles a flattened snowman, could be of evolutionary origin due to volatile outgassing. Their calculations help to understand what the current state of bodies from the edge of the Solar System may teach us about their original properties.