Scientists have always been fascinated by our solar system, but it wasn’t until very recently that a true understanding of the extent of our solar system was realised. Until the beginning of the twentieth century we didn’t even know that Pluto existed. And it wasn’t until the end of that century that we knew about any other celestial bodies, even further out, orbiting our sun. All of these bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune are known as the Kuiper Belt.
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The Kuiper belt is a huge frozen ring orbiting the sun comprising of 70,000 Kuiper Belt Objects, or KBOs, made of huge chunks of frozen methane, water and ammonia. In fact, the belt is so cold, 50K, that most substances that would be liquid or gaseous on Earth are frozen solid in the belt. The belt itself is 20 times as wide and 200 times as massive as the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Three of the five known Dwarf planets in our solar system are found in the Kuiper belt; Pluto, Haumea and Makeman, Pluto being the largest of the three. (Another dwarf planet, Eris, has been found outside the Kuiper belt and is much more massive than Pluto). All four of these dwarf planets are given the name “Plutoids” in honour of Pluto which, until recently, was regarded as a planet.
The discovery of the Kuiper belt started on the 18th of February 1930 when Clyde W Tombaugh discovered Pluto. That same year, American Astronomer, Frederick C. Leonard was the first astronomer to suggest that there might be even more objects further out in the solar system.
In 1943 Irish Astronomer, Kenneth E. Edgeworth wrote a paper theorising that the distribution of the solar system’s small bodies were not bound by the present distance of Pluto.
In 1951, Dutch Astronomer Gerard Kuiper suggested that some types of comets might come from the Kuiper Belt. However, at the time, most astronomers believed Pluto was probably about the size of the Earth. If this was the case, Kuiper pointed out, the Kuiper belt could not possibly exist anymore, because they would all have been pulled in by Pluto’s gravitational field.
In 1987, English Astronomer, David Jewitt wondered about this and the “apparent emptiness” of the outer solar system, feeling that this assumption contradicted the myriad asteroids and comets that were closer to the sun. He convinced one of his recently graduated students, Jane Luu, to help him try to find another object beyond Pluto’s orbit.
They spent a lot of time in observatories in Arizona and Chile
Until now, the space beyond Pluto hadn’t been given a name but in 1992 it was named the Kuiper belt after Gerard Kuiper. There has been some debate over this name, however, because although the belt is sometimes known as the Edgeworth Belt or the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, some scientists it should be called the Leonard-Edgeworth belt or even the Leonard-Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, but that doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.
Because of the advances in Astronomical technology, many other KBOs have been discovered since then such as 2060 Chiron and 5145 Pholus and the research into the Kuiper belt keeps continuing.
Currently there are many investigations ongoing into examining the Kuiper Belt, these are varied on their focuses, from the existence of the regions Binary Objects and how frequent they are to how the Kuiper Belt was formed. Also research which is being done involved the high endowment of organic (carbon-bearing) molecules and water ice being present in the Kuiper Belt, which are the raw materials out of which life evolves and investigations in this field are very interesting.
Binary Objects in The Kuiper Belt are currently seen as very interesting in the cosmological society, with research being done to discover how these “systems” are formed, the frequency of them and also how they are bound together with such a small gravity field holding the two objects together. A study done by astronomy graduate student Alex Parker from the University of Victoria in British Colombia, Canada
A study done by Kern and Elliot out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006 resulted in the analysis of how frequent Binary Objects are in the Kuiper Belt going by the previous publications of Goldreich et al. (2005). Despite basing their work off of Goldreich’s, Kern and Elliot improved upon it and proved that the frequency distribution of Binary Objects favours formation models that use gravitational rather than physical interactions in the formation of Binary Objects.
Another study that was significantly backed up by Alex Parker’s was conducted by Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena
Despite the numerous investigations being done into the existence of the Kuiper Belt, only one Mission into the Belt is being carried out; NASA’s New Horizons Mission is currently on track to reach Pluto in 2015 and its main aim is as a reconnaissance of the Binary objects Pluto and Charon, the previous planet and its moon were actually found to be binary objects orbiting each other and this fly by mission by NASA is hoped to give us new insights into Binary Objects but also of Pluto and Charon as well, also it is hoped that the mission will give us more information into the abundance of organic and water ice molecules exhibited in the Kuiper Belt Objects. As part of an extended mission the New Horizons Mission will then after the fly by, pass the two objects and continue to investigate other KBOs in our mission to find out more about the edges of our solar system. A very interesting prospect indeed.
In conclusion despite the relatively recent discovery of the Kuiper Belt and many of the Objects within it, we already know a great deal about the area of space. There is still much to learn about the Belt, with the discovery of other objects and the research being done into the formation not only of the Kuiper Belt but also the Binary Objects it contains, and the mission being carried out by NASA to visit Pluto, Charon and several other Objects of interest that wait for us out there. The legacy that is lasted in the Kuiper Belt for the astrologists Frederick C. Leonard, Kenneth Edgeworth and Gerard Kuiper will last for as long as investigations into this specific region of space continue. They’re hypothesis helped to discover one of the most interesting regions of space in our solar system, which continues to puzzle and intrigue us.
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