2023-10-08 06:00:12
Researchers may have discovered a dozen new massive objects beyond the Kuiper Belt, challenging our understanding of the Solar System.
Illustration of the New Horizons probe passing near Pluto and its moon Charon (Charon (PI Charon, Pluto I) is Pluto’s largest natural satellite.).
Crédit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
The Sun does not only influence the eight planets that orbit around it. Beyond Neptune, the Solar System extends to about 100 astronomical units (AU), or 100 times the distance from Earth and the sun. The Oort Cloud, a reservoir of comets and asteroids, extends even to at least 1,000 AU.
The Kuiper Belt, located between 30 and 50 AU from the Sun, is home to the majority of the largest asteroids, comets and other known objects beyond the orbit (In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the trajectory that draws in space a body…) of Neptune. Its famous residents include the dwarf planet Pluto and the double-lobed object Arrokoth.
The research team, led by Wesley Fraser, an astrophysicist at the National Research Council of Canada, used artificial intelligence to quickly analyze data ( In information technology (IT), data is an elementary description, often…) of the telescope (A telescope, (from the Greek tele meaning “far” and skopein meaning…) Subaru (Subaru is a manufacturer Japanese automobile, born in 1956, and part of the Fuji Heavy group…) in Hawaii. They discovered 12 potential objects about 60 AU from the Sun. Alan Stern, the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission (New Horizons (“New Horizons”) new horizons” in French) is a space probe of…) of NASA, supports these findings, indicating that the probe was continually bombarded with dust, suggesting the existence of more undetected objects.
Artistic interpretation of what the Sun could look like as seen from the Kuiper Belt.
Credit: Getty Images
However, Pedro Bernardinelli, an astronomer at the University of Washington, remains skeptical. A similar study in Chile found only one object beyond 50 AU. Researchers continue to analyze more recent data in hopes of confirming their findings.
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