{"paper":{"title":"Origin of (2014) MU69-like Kuiper-belt contact binaries from wide binaries","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"astro-ph.EP","authors_text":"Christoph M. Schaefer, Evgeni Grishin, Hagai B. Perets, Oliver Wandel, Uri Malamud","submitted_at":"2020-03-03T19:00:00Z","abstract_excerpt":"Following its flyby and first imaging the Pluto-Charon binary, the New Horizons spacecraft visited the Kuiper-Belt-Object (KBO) (486958) 2014 MU69 (Arrokoth). Imaging showed MU69 to be a contact-binary, made of two individual lobes connected by a narrow neck, rotating at low spin period (15.92 h), and having high obliquity (~98 deg), similar to other KBO contact-binaries inferred through photometric observations. The origin of such peculiar configurations is puzzling, and all scenarios suggested for the origins of contact-binaries fail to reproduce such properties and their likely high frequen"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2003.01720","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2003.01720/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}