Far beyond Neptune, astronomers have finally confirmed a compact clump of icy worlds hiding inside the Kuiper Belt, a feature they are now calling an inner “kernel.” The tightly packed structure, ...

An artist's illustration of the view from a Kuiper Belt object. (CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)) Astronomers at Princeton University have uncovered evidence that the outer solar system is ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered that a ...

In the outer reaches of the Solar System, beyond the ice giant Neptune, lies a ring of comets and dwarf planets known as the Kuiper Belt. The closest of these objects are billions of kilometers away.

Trying to understand the makeup and evolution of the solar system's Kuiper belt has kept researchers busy since it was hypothesized soon after the discovery of Pluto in 1930. In particular, binary ...

The Kuiper Belt object Altjira was thought to be a binary, but closer analysis suggests that it is highly likely to be a triple system This raises the question of the three-body problem; if Altjira ...

We preselected all newsletters you had before unsubscribing.

The puzzle of predicting how three gravitationally bound bodies move in space has challenged mathematicians for centuries, and has most recently been popularized in the novel and television show '3 ...