Washington: As it orbits beyond Pluto in the icy outer reaches of our solar system, the small faraway world known as Quaoar—named after a creation god in Native American mythology—is giving scientists some shocks.
On Wednesday, scientists claimed to have found a ring orbiting Quaoar that is similar to the one around Saturn. The one circling Quaoar, however, contradicts the notion of where such rings can develop because it is considerably farther away from it than what is now accepted in science.
The ring’s distance from Quaoar placed it in a region where, in the opinion of scientists, particles should easily come together to create a moon around a celestial body rather than remain as distinct parts in a disc of ring material.
“Another option is that one needs to rethink models for the aggregation of frozen particles, and particles might not always aggregate into larger things as quickly as one might assume.”