X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Kuiper Belt


Kuiper belt

Modern computer simulations show the Kuiper belt to have been strongly influenced by Jupiter and Neptune, and also suggest that neither Uranus nor Neptune could have formed in their present positions, as too little primordial matter existed at that range to produce objects of such high mass.

The scattered disc was created when Neptune migrated outward into the proto-Kuiper belt, which at the time was much closer to the Sun, and left in its wake a population of dynamically stable objects that could never be affected by its orbit (the Kuiper belt proper), and a population whose perihelia are close enough that Neptune can still disturb them as it travels around the Sun (the scattered disc).

All this points to the conclusion that Triton was once a KBO that was captured by Neptune during its outward migration.

Neptune's current influence is too weak to explain such a massive "vacuuming", though the Nice model proposes that it could have been the cause of mass removal in the past.


Oxygen difluoride

In Robert L. Forward's science fiction novel Camelot 30K, oxygen difluoride was used as a biochemical solvent by fictional life forms living in the solar system's Kuiper belt.

R-Type Tactics II: Operation Bitter Chocolate

Depending on a choice made at the end of a mission to Neptune, the player can swing around Triton to attack a GZRA outpost and mount a side attack on the Utgarda Loki beam cannon in the Kuiper Belt or directly attack the Utgarda Loki before the siege of Glitnir.


see also

Julio Fernández

Julio Ángel Fernández (born 1946), Uruguayan astronomer who hypothesised the existence of what became known as the Kuiper belt

Trans-Neptunian objects in fiction

In "The Griffin Equivalency", the fourth episode of the second season of The Big Bang Theory, Rajesh Koothrappali is included in People magazine's "30 Under 30 to watch" list for his discovery of a trans-Neptunian object beyond the Kuiper belt.