A squad of astronomers believe they have detected physical object moving far beyond the Kuiper belt , suggesting a potential second asteroid belt within our Solar System . The team has presented the findings at the 54thLunar and Planetary Science Conferenceand is get together a paper , but the oeuvre has not yet been peer - review .
NASA poke into New Horizons has gone a tenacious fashion since it was set in motion in 2006 , traveling around56 Astronomical Units(AU ) from the Earth , with one AU being the distance between the Earth and the Sun . It has n’t yet left the Solar System likeVoyager 1 and 2but has made its way through the Kuiper belt , explore themost removed world to date .
The investigation should have left the Kuiper belt , the disc of objects that extends from around 30 AU to 50 AU . However , rubble collector on the probe – will alive while in hibernation – found something funny . Beyond 50 AU , there has n’t been a drop - off in the amount of dust detected .
“ The number of shock is not declining , ” Alan Stern , a worldwide scientist at the Southwest Research Institute , toldScience . “ And the simplest explanation for that is that there is more stuff out there that we have n’t detected . ”
This could mean that the Kuiper knock continue beyond where we thought or , give the free fall - off in object observed after 50 AU , there is a second smash that begins further out . While depend for moreobjectsfor New Horizons to search using ground - based telescope , Stern and the New Horizons squad discover a dozen of them , far further out than they were expecting .
" The search lead from our 2020 and 2021 observations have detected an addition in concentration of objects at distance d~80 au , compared to the nearly empty region beyond the extinct edge of the Kuiper Belt at d~50 , " the squad write in apiecepresented to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference earlier this year . " This tentative result seems to betray the presence of a hitherto undetected and perhaps massive population of planetesimals beyond the know Kuiper Belt . "
To make the detective work , the team used stacks of images adopt of the area , ordinate so that " stationary " objects align . This allows you to see any moving objective , say , as they douse the luminousness of a lead they go in front of . It ’s an incredibly hard process , but by surveying a large enough area you could estimate how many aim are in that region of sky . The team sped up the process usingAI , make unnecessary them from examining 15,000 candidates a night , get across the movement of 12 objects moving through space .
Though exciting , the workplace has not yet been equal - review , and the squad delineate the discovery as " probationary " .
" next ground – and space – based sketch , " the squad concludes , " … will be able-bodied to corroborate this exciting unexampled result . "
The theme was presented to the54thLunar and Planetary Science Conference 2023 .
[ H / T : scientific discipline ]
