NASA Discovers Mysterious Objects in the Kuiper Belt

 

the vast cold and mysterious region of our solar system known as the kuiper belt could potentially hold many secrets to the origins of our world it is that part of space that we have only now begun to explore and it's proving to be even more intriguing than previously thought

 besides bits of rocks and ice the belt is filled with dwarf planets and comets and some very strange objects welcome to fact nominal and in today's article we will explore the darkness and expense of the kuiper belt as we try to unravel more of its mysteries one of the most mysterious places of our solar system also happens to be the largest structure yet besides the oort cloud and magnetosphere of jupiter home to rocks ice comets dwarf planets and other strange objects the inner edge of the kuiper belt begins right at the orbit of neptune and is around 30 astronomical units away from the sun making the region a dark and chilling one

 shaped and puffed up like a doughnut the icy objects in the belt could be remnants of the main asteroid belt and jupiter however some are just too unusual to fit that theory everyone's favorite ex-planet pluto happens to be an inhabitant of the kuiper belt

 other dwarf planets can also be found within the region each with their own satellites as well the objects in the belt are simply now referred to as kbos or kuiper belt objects it also happens to be a source of comets as it slowly erodes but perhaps the most mind-blowing thing about it all is that for decades scientists

 had absolutely no idea that they had ever discovered the kuiper belt it's only when they began studying pluto more closely is when they came to the realization that pluto isn't the cold lonely planet we once thought it to be and has many neighbors in a completely different locality so far more than 2 000 kbos have been identified and researchers have discovered some truly strange anomalies that make the kuiper belt a very interesting place indeed there lies an object in the kuiper belt that seems to be on a completely different trajectory and has raised many questions that scientists and astronomers are still not able to answer the ominous object has been named aron after the celtic god of war a powerful magician and a master hunter not bad as far as names go iran has been an object of speculation though owing to the way it has been turning

 most of the objects in the belt are made up mostly of rock and ice but with the way aron has been moving it has caused scientists to question whether it could possibly be made of something entirely different

 the rate at which it's rotating is so fast that the centrifugal force should actually tear it apart but this has not been the case after observing the object researchers are now considering if there could be alien activity involved when new horizons tried to get a closer look at the object the transmissions were immediately cut off almost inexplicably scientists have theorized that it could be because someone or something out there is monitoring us and does not want us getting any closer because it could quite possibly be an extraterrestrial spacecraft

 this might seem like a stretch but a group of researchers are working to solve the mystery around aron and if we have finally found solid evidence of extraterrestrials lying in the kuiper belt

 lying about a billion miles away from pluto is the peanut-shaped object ultimately it is the farthest place that has ever been visited by humans or in this case through the new horizon spacecraft

 ultimatuly is a very cold icy little world receiving approximately 1900 times less sunlight than our planet earth alan stern investigator for the new horizons mission stated we have never seen something that was primordial so unchanged since the early formation days it is a contact binary object with lightly cratered regions and latches of brightness consisting mainly of two lobes that each form separately through the accumulation of small particles of gas and dust which only fuse together much later the larger lobe is called ultima while tule is the comparatively smaller one

 as of november 2019 it was officially named arakov the two have been observed to even come together in an unusual way it doesn't look like the two have experienced any collisions or violent mergers instead scientists say that the two come together traveling only a few miles per hour kind of like a gentle kiss as for satellites it seems like arakoth is flying solo new horizons has not been able to spot rings or satellites which makes the object stand out even more besides the object is unusually flat and also appears to have ice water but with freezing temperatures being so far away from the sun and all it doesn't seem to be abundant

 the new horizons mission might just do another flyby of the object on its journey around pluto and other ice worlds in the kuiper belt [Music]

 the kuiper belt may be known for its many comets and dwarf planets but there is a set of twins in the kuiper belt that are proving to be quite the attention seeking pair named antifallas and antifallas the twins take 25 to 30 years to actually orbit each other and 290 years for the binary system to orbit the sun

 2001 qw 322 as they are officially called is a highly split kuiper belt pair orbiting around each other the fact that the two are basically identical is nothing mind-blowing in and of itself but rather the orbital distance is extremely rare to put that into perspective imagine two baseballs in deep space that are bound gravitationally in a binary system they would have an orbital distance of say 124 miles

 compare that to the 2001 qw 322 pair that are separated by 77 671 miles

 they have been given the special name antipholus after the twin characters from william shakespeare's earliest plays the comedy of errors based on the mistaken identity of two sets of twins it is true that the two are very difficult to distinguish apart and astronomers have to be extremely mindful while studying them to know which is which

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 on december 28 2004 astronomers found what they believed to be the weirdest object yet

 among the litter of dwarf planets and objects in the kuiper belt lies what looks like

 a potato

 the minor planet haumia named in honor of its hawaiian discovery is about one-third the mass of pluto its peculiar shape has many guessing whether it looks more like a potato floating in space or more like a squashed cigar either way the strange object could actually be extremely useful in shedding some light on the history of the collisions that have taken place in the solar system astronomers were astonished when they discovered the giant space potato is getting brighter and fainter by roughly 25

 every two hours owing to its elongated shape

 the object is moving at a spectacular speed and actually holds the title for the fastest rotating large object in our solar system scientists believe it's this rapid spin that is responsible for distorting haumea's shape to give you an idea of just how fast it actually moves a day on haumea would only be four hours haumea also has two moons of its own namako and hiyaka and it became the first known object in the kuiper belt to have rings

 there is much debate though whether it could be even considered a minor planet everything we know about the mysterious object is from ground-based telescopes and until we have further flybys and missions to the kuiper belt the space potato will continue to be a mystery [Music]

 there has been a long-standing theory about the existence of planet nine sorry pluto we don't mean you this is the hypothetical planet that scientists and astronomers have been speculating about for years now though the so-called planet has not directly been observed these predictions actually come from the gravitational effects that have been observed in other objects in the belt scientist duo scott shepard from the carnegie institute for science in washington dc and chadwick trujillo of northern arizona university have together found 62 distant objects accounting for about 80 percent of the objects discovered at the edge of the solar system they are actively on the hunt for the infamous planet x now another pair of scientists from caltech michael brown and konstantin battigan have published their own study which suggests that a planet about the mass of neptune and orbiting the sun about 20 times farther than neptune could be the real reason for the gravitational nudge causing all these small objects to orbit in the kuiper belt in their own words they claim that the more that they can find the better we will all be able to understand the outer parts of the solar system and could potentially help redefine our knowledge of the system's evolution with the new horizon spacecraft still in orbit it's quite possible we might discover the hypothetical planet sooner than we think [Music]

 nasa's new horizon spacecraft made history as being the first and only craft to visit the kuiper belt the mission has actually shown us why we should be exploring our solar system more closely and as of today the new horizon spacecraft is still actively making its way all around the edge of our solar system and showing us just how truly bizarre space is scientists are now looking into the possibility of sending more probes and doing flybys of the belt specifically more detailed orbital reconnaissance missions rather than direct missions to the region

 for now we can only imagine what more could be lurking at the edge of the solar system in the dark and cold expanse of the kuiper belt so what do you think scientists will discover next in the kuiper belt tell us in the comments below don't forget to smash that like button and subscribe to the channel for more space related articles thanks for reading we'll see you in the next article [Music]

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