Blurs

Far beyond Neptune, in the frozen darkness of the Kuiper Belt, lies a world unlike almost anything else in the Solar System. It is called Haumea. At first glance, Haumea might seem like just another distant dwarf planet, one of the countless icy bodies orbiting the Sun at enormous distances. But Haumea is extraordinary. It spins once roughly every four hours. That incredible rotation has stretched the world into an elongated shape resembling a rugby ball. It has two moons, a ring, an exceptionally bright surface dominated by water ice, and a mysterious group of smaller bodies travelling around the Sun on related orbits. And there is an even bigger mystery. Astronomers believe that something violent happened to Haumea billions of years ago — probably a gigantic collision during the chaotic early history of the Solar System. Exactly what happened, however, remains uncertain. Recent research has even challenged the traditional idea that Haumea was simply smashed apart by one enormous impa...