Astronomers have discovered numerous mysterious objects in the region beyond the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the Solar System.
According to the journal Science, the leading hypothesis is that there may be a “second Kuiper Belt” lurking beyond the known belt, with a comparable mass.
This suggests that the influence of the Sun extends further into space than we previously thought.
A mysterious belt of objects revealed through the New Horizons mission – (Photo: NASA).
Beyond Neptune, which is located 30 AU (astronomical units; 1 AU is the distance from the Sun to Earth), our parent star extends its “tentacles” another 100 astronomical units, holding onto other small objects that orbit it and possibly even a “ninth planet.”
Beyond the edge of the solar system lies the Oort Cloud, filled with comets and asteroids, loosely held in place, stretching out to regions of space 1,000 AU from the Sun.
This mysterious belt could be located somewhere between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Its traces have been revealed through 12 potential large mass objects located up to 60 AU from the Sun, as recorded by data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.
New Horizons – with its original primary mission to study Pluto – is currently 57 AU from its parent star.
Presented at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, the research team led by Dr. Wesley Fraser from the National Research Council of Canada stated that they were not surprised by this discovery.
They noted that the Solar System is still quite small compared to known star systems – at least concerning the objects and clusters of objects that we are aware of.
