As if there weren’t enough cool stuff in the cosmos already, scientists say a place could hold large, space-spinning donuts made of hot warming rock. They published their report in the Journal of Geophysical Research: planets.
Planet scientists Simon Lock and Sarah Stewart were trying to figure out what happens when two planets collide. As we know from our own Earth, planets are not just dead rocks or gas balls, but functional, complex bodies, with moving temperature, orbits, shape, rotation and gravity.
As a result, planetary shipwrecks on the planet are less like rock-breaking and more like a crash of a figure skating, sudden, moderate grip in three-legged axels.
The effects of these disasters are so violent, astronomers believe, that the two groups involved are reduced to hot debris. Over time, that debris cools and congeals, eventually spinning and condensing into a new square body. It was this kind of breakdown, some scientists say, that created the Earth.
Lock and Stewart aren’t so sure about that. They think that the origin of our planet may have been larger, and largely in the shape of a donut. They assume that the heat and movement of these catastrophes can turn hot debris into a large, fat circle called synestia.
From there, the process is similar: The vaporized rock cools and begins to stick together, coming together into a rocky baby planet – and maybe a moon or two.
After centuries of research, we are still not entirely sure how our own Moon was born. Much of its content is similar to Earth, which, as Lock and Stewart says, the cosmic donut could have both kicked.
The term synestia is their invention, too, a combination of the prefix syn, meaning “together,” and Hestia, the Greek goddess of home, fireplace and architecture.
True synestia has not yet been seen in space, but scientists are confident that they will turn up once we dig deeper into other solar systems.