• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

The Belt At The Edge Of The Solar System Is Larger Than We Thought

February 24, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Beyond the orbits of the eight planets in our Solar System, several distant objects make up the Kuiper Belt. The extent of this region has been estimated based on the discovery of such objects – but new observations are implying that it goes further out than previously thought.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft visited the most famous Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), the dwarf planet Pluto. It then flew by a small KBO called Arrokoth, and is now traveling across the belt. One of its instruments, the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (SDC), measures levels of dust as the spacecraft travels.

Advertisement

Named after the person that named Pluto, the SDC was expected to see a drop in the amount of dust it picked up. The dust comes from collisions between KBOs, asteroids, and comets, as well as KBOs’ bombardment from interstellar dust. Observations from Earth consider the belt to extend to 50 times the distance between Earth and the Sun (or one Astronomical Unit, AU). 

But New Horizons is at 55 AU, and it is still going strong.

The team’s analysis suggests that the belt might go all the way to 80 AU or maybe even further, implying that KBOs might also extend further. If that is indeed the case, there are many undiscovered objects in the Kuiper Belt.

“New Horizons is making the first direct measurements of interplanetary dust far beyond Neptune and Pluto, so every observation could lead to a discovery,” lead author of the new study Alex Doner from the University of Colorado Boulder, who serves as SDC lead, said in a statement. “The idea that we might have detected an extended Kuiper Belt — with a whole new population of objects colliding and producing more dust – offers another clue in solving the mysteries of the solar system’s most distant regions.”

Advertisement



The team is not discounting alternatives – maybe the dust is being pushed by sunlight to more distant regions of the solar system, messing with the expected measurements. Or maybe New Horizons has encountered short-lived ice that is adding a temporary extra amount of dust when only little is present. It’s possible, but given the difficulties of finding KBOs, it’s not surprising that we have not found a large population of them.

“These new scientific results from New Horizons may be the first time that any spacecraft has discovered a new population of bodies in our solar system,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. “I can’t wait to see how much farther out these elevated Kuiper Belt dust levels go.”

The results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Soccer – FIFA backs down on threat to fine Premier clubs who play South American players
  2. U.S. House passes abortion rights bill, outlook poor in Senate
  3. UBS clients raise $650 million for biggest yet biotech impact fund
  4. We’ve Breached Six Of The Nine “Planetary Boundaries” For Sustaining Human Civilization

Source Link: The Belt At The Edge Of The Solar System Is Larger Than We Thought

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • When It Comes To Pain, The Nocebo Effect Beats The Placebo Effect
  • English Speakers Obey This Quirky Grammar Rule, Even If They Don’t Know It
  • How Is The Black, White, And Secret Third Smoke Made During The Conclave?
  • Can Children Help Each Other Pass The Famous Marshmallow Test?
  • California’s Highest-Altitude Tree Found By Happy Accident At 12,657 Feet
  • Is The Spiny Devil Katydid The Strangest Insect In The World? You Tell Us
  • Yep, You Can Milk A Snake – These Scientists Extract Venom From Some Of The Deadliest Snakes
  • The Last Remaining Soft Tissues Of A Dodo Date To 1683 CE – And Are Still Going Strong
  • This Indigenous Tribe Has Tragically Forgotten How To Dance, Sing Lullabies And Make Fire
  • Nepal’s Snow Leopard Population Is Bigger Than Previously Thought, But Still Mysterious
  • The Amazon’s “Dark Earth” Was Created By Ancient People Thousands Of Years Ago
  • Watch A Gorgeous White Stingaree Swimming Along The Seafloor
  • Starbase City: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Gets Its Own Municipality In Texas, Complete With A Familiar Mayor
  • What Is The Specific Purpose Of These Lines On Towels?
  • Just 0.001 Percent Of The Deep Ocean Has Been Directly Observed
  • First Ever Image Of “Free Floating” Atoms Snapped By MIT Scientists
  • The Haenyeo “Sea Women” Of Korea Have Evolved For A Life Under The Sea
  • Was Alcatraz Inescapable? A Study Suggests A 1962 Jailbreak May Have Been A Success
  • Title Of Ancient Burnt Herculaneum Scroll Identified For First Time In 2,000 Years
  • New Species Of Incredible “Accordion Worm” Can Squish Down To One-Fifth Of Its Original Size
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version