Kuiper Belt Origins

What came first, the Kuiper Belt or the Oort cloud? Both were mere proposals by astronomers of the mid 20th century before the Kuiper belts direct discovery in 1992. It gets its name by the author of its proposal. In 1951, Gerard P. Kuiper developed a strong case for Kenneth E. Edgeworth's speculation of small bodies distribution throughout the solar system. working from Edgeworth's analysis of the mass distribution of spacial bodies in the creation of the solar system, Kuiper demonstrated that large residual amounts of icy, inactive comet nuclei must lie beyond Neptune. He also supported his proposal by explaining short period comets (those whose orbit the sun in less than 200 years). He explained that these comets that orbit the sun in the same direction as all the planets require a closer more flattened source than comets whose periods last longer than 20 years. It is interesting to note that Pluto was discovered 62 years before the first detection of the Kuiper belt. Because of the discovery of the Kuiper belt, Pluto, as of 2006, is considered a dwarf planet because of its location and size in the belt.





"Kuiper belt". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
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