Origin of (2014) MU69-like Kuiper-belt contact binaries from wide binaries

Abstract

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 frequency. Here we show that semi-secular perturbations operating only on ultra-wide (~0.1-0.4 Hill-radius) KBO-binaries can robustly lead to gentle, slow-speed binary mergers at arbitrarily high obliquities, but low rotational velocities, that can reproduce MU69's (and similar oblique contact binaries) characteristics. Using N-body simulations, we find that ~15% of all ultra-wide binaries with cosine-uniform inclination distribution are likely to merge through this process. Moreover, we find that such mergers are sufficiently gentle as to only slightly deform the KBO shape, and can produce the measured rotation speed of MU69. The semi-secular contact-binary formation channel not only explains the observed properties of MU69, but could also apply for other Kuiper/asteroid belt binaries, and for Solar/extra-solar moon systems.

Submitted on 27 June 2019

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