NASA seeks origin of 'weird' fast-spinning dwarf planet Haumea

Interesting paper to read. Let It Go: Geophysically Driven Ejection of the Haumea Family Members, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ac8e03

I note this comment in the paper. "The evolution of the Kuiper Belt has been divided into three distinct stages (Levison et al. 2008). The first is a quiescent stage conducive to growth, characterized by a Kuiper Belt between 15 and 30 au containing tens of Earth masses and eccentricities and inclinations ≪10^−2. Classical KBOs are associated with formation in this stage. The second is a dynamical instability associated with Neptune’s migration, likely as described by the Nice model instability (Tsiganis et al. 2005). Once this stage is initiated, quantities like the mass of the Kuiper Belt and Neptune’s semimajor axis tend to be approached with an e-folding time of around 50 Myr (Malhotra 1993; Tsiganis et al. 2005; Nesvorný & Vokrouhlický 2016). During this stage, Neptune cleared out >99.7% of the Kuiper Belt. Many KBOs, including Haumea, were ejected to the scattered disk; others joined the resonant populations. The third stage is relatively quiet, characterized by a slow loss of members from the scattered disk, depleting it by a factor of ∼10^2."

My note. The paradigm requires much more mass in the ecliptic, long, long ago to model solar system formation theories using computer simulations. I also note this comment like a pitch for abiogenesis, astrobiology, and perhaps extending the habitable zone, far, far, away from the Sun.

"The need for the thermal evolution to match the details of the geophysical modeling (e.g., collapse of porosity, specific mineral densities) constrains Haumea’s properties. Our geochemical models show that Haumea was able to generate and sustain a liquid water ocean from 130 to 380 Myr postformation, a 250 Myr period. Haumea could indeed be an ancient potential ocean world of the solar system, the most distant one known. This may have grand implications for the search for habitability in the solar system and beyond, as an understanding of life’s physical limits is determined by the environments in which it can survive. In addition to the potential importance for ocean world studies, constraining the evolution and timescale of Haumea puts limits on events that involved the outer solar system, particularly Neptune’s migration. Future work will explore these scenarios more fully and evaluate how well dynamical predictions align with the timing of events described here."