A tiny, primordial, and bizarre-looking planet at the edge of our solar system could hold the key to understanding how Earth came to exist.
On New Year’s Day, 2019, almost 13 years after its launch, NASA’s New Horizons space probe flew by a tiny planet, 2014 MU69, around 7 billion kilometers away. MU69, nicknamed Ultima Thule, is an object in the Kuiper Belt, an asteroid belt located beyond the orbit of Neptune. Ultima Thule is the most distant object in the solar system ever visited by a spacecraft.
Here is a video with more info regarding the New Horizons
Dr. Brett Gladman, a planetary astronomer from the University of British Columbia, studied MU69 in his recent paper. Dr. Gladman with his team estimated the density of the impacted craters on MU69 and confirmed the actual density with the images taken by the New Horizons space probe.
Here is a podcast containing the interview with Dr. Gladman.
Using this information, they were able to confirm the size distribution of the Kuiper Belt. They were able to deduct the size distribution from the impacted craters because of the collisions that occur in the Kuiper belt. The collisions leave a dent on MU69 and from there, objects that were not observable through a telescope from the earth can be indirectly observed through looking at the impact craters they have created on the surface of MU69.
The results of this experiment are that MU69 looks exactly the same as it did 4.5 billion years ago. The MU69 in the Kuiper belt barely had any crater impacts despite being formed for 4.5 billion years. This indicates that there were barely any collisions with other objects. This confirms that the objects in the Kuiper belt are very spread out.
With this newly obtained information, the astronomers are able to place a constraint on current planetary accretional models (planet formation models) as this should be the destination of all planet creation model. This is a big step forward observationally as a constraint on the theoretical understanding of how you make a planet, or at least the initial building blocks of planets.
Additionally, the spacious size distribution of the Kuiper belt explains the lack of new planet formation in our solar system since planet formation requires collision of the objects in space. For example, Pluto is thought to have formed closer to the Sun than where Neptune is today, and have gotten stranded rather than being formed in the Kuiper belt.
All in all, space is still a mystery to us and with the advancing technologies, we are able to slowly unveil the mysteries regarding space and the process of planet formation.
