Beyond Pluto: Getting Bigger All the Time

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"The Kuiper belt formed more than four billion years ago when the solar system was just taking shape. Slow-moving gravel-sized debris at the solar system's edge gradually coalesced through gravitational attraction, eventually forming objects with a land area equal to large American states (a, b and c). Early in its history the Kuiper belt was a flattened disk (d), but later something—perhaps a passing star—disrupted the disk, accelerated the KBOs and sent them into more highly inclined orbits. Today the Kuiper belt is relatively thick (e), and when the fast-moving KBOs collide they break into smaller pieces (f)."

An intriguing illustration and caption from:American Scientist Online - Discovering the Edge of the Solar System (Subscription Required)

Recent discoveries suggest that planets larger than Pluto may exist in the outer reaches of our solar system.

If you were to fly a spaceship to the outer edge of our solar system, just beyond the orbit of the planet Pluto, you would eventually pass through a field of icy bodies called the Kuiper Belt. Some of these are fairly small, about the size of a house, but others are nearly half the size of Pluto, itself a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO). The KBOs are interesting for a couple of reasons: They appear to be remnants from the formation of our solar system, and they're the source of the short-period comets, those that take less than 200 years to go around the Sun.

Posted by Van der Leun at August 31, 2003 10:21 AM