Scientists proposed a new type of planetary object they are calling synestia, where a celestial body violently collides with another body, resulting in a donut-shaped disk of vaporized rock. After some time, the body will cool down and turn into the solid, round planets we currently know.
Sarah Stewart, a planetary scientist at the University of California Davis, and Simon Lock, a graduate student at Harvard University in Cambridge, co-authored the study that was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
The name synestia combines the prefix “syn-” meaning “together” and Estia, the Greek goddess of architecture and structures.
The idea was modeled after ice skaters doing a spin — when they put their arms out to the side they slow down but when they tuck their arms in, their momentum stays constant.
The team was interested in how that idea would apply to rapidly spinning planets colliding with each other and how it would impact the angular momentum.
