The dwarf planet Ceres is located in the asteroid belt but looks nothing like its neighbors. In a new paper, scientists propose an explanation for the conundrum.
Scientists have proposed explanations for each strange trait. Maybe Ceres formed inside the asteroid belt, in a really weird way that allowed it to maintain a lot of water. Maybe it formed without disrupting the rest of the main belt. Maybe over the course of billions of years, a lot of ammonia floated in from the outer solar system and found itself on the surface of the dwarf planet .
Or maybe, the authors of the new paper propose, Ceres was born beyond the orbit of the giant planets and got sent into the asteroid belt long ago.The early solar system was a chaotic place. Thousands of small celestial bodies called planetesimals jostled and fought for dominance, aggregating into planets only to be smashed apart again.
When those planets began to migrate to their modern positions, it shook things up a lot. The large population of Kuiper Belt objects were disrupted, their orbits perturbed by the motions of the giant worlds. Some of them were ejected completely from the solar system. Some crashed into each other and were obliterated. Some were captured, as in the case of Neptune's moon
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