The “demoted” dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon make an unusual pair, and for decades, scientists have been discussing how the binary system—in which each mutually orbits the other—came to be.

Pluto's big moon Charon may have a different origin story than scientists suspected. New research suggests the two bodies engaged in a celestial kiss and tango.

Pluto and its largest moon Charon could have come together via a 10-hour “kiss-and-capture” encounter after a grazing collision

This "kiss and capture" mechanism offers a fresh perspective on planetary formation, particularly about Pluto and its largest moon Charon.

“Because Pluto is rotating rapidly prior to the collision, and because Charon lies mostly outside of their corotation zone, it is able to ‘push’ Charon off, and Charon starts to slowly migrate out,” first author Dr. Adeene Denton, a planetary scientist from the University of Arizona, told The Guardian.

Pluto and Charon may have formed through a “kiss and capture” mechanism, with the two icy bodies colliding and becoming temporarily stuck together, spinning in a cosmic dance before separating into two objects that are forever bound in orbit,

Billions of years ago, in the frigid outer reaches of our solar system, two icy worlds collided. Rather than destroying each other in a cosmic catastrophe, they spun together like a celestial snowman,

Simulations suggest Pluto and its largest moon may have gently stuck together for a few hours before Charon settled into a stable orbit around the dwarf planet

Unlike Earth, where the Moon orbits the planet, Pluto and Charon orbit each other, forming a binary system that is more similar to the Earth-moon system than any other moon in the solar system.