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Pluto may have a young surface due to the collision which created its moons.


Would it be so round were this the case? I assumed it would take a long time for gravity to make a planet's surface round, much longer than it would take to accumulate a bunch of impact craters.


It would be rounded almost instantly. In an impact of that size -- almost exactly comparable to the impact which created the Earth-Moon system -- the surface of Pluto would have been heated so extensively as to become molton rock.




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