Any foreign astronomers searching for life - supporting exoplanets could be in for a letdown if they look at our solar system – the monumental amount of dust in the outer solar system could make all the planets except Neptune effectively invisible .
Although we be given to suppose of our solar organization as the Sun plus the eight ( or , for traditionalists , nine ) planets , there ’s also the vast expanse beyond Neptune that ’s full of millions of icy bodies . get laid as the Kuiper Belt , this 2d asteroid bash is nearly double as far from the Sun as Neptune is , and it ’s 20 times as wide and as much as 200 clip as massive as the more conversant asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter .
The Kuiper Belt also creates a monolithic dust disk , and that junk may be shrouding most of our internal solar system in a humeral veil of secrecy , as NASA astrophysicist Marc Kuchner explains :
“ The planets may be too dim to notice directly , but outlander studying the solar system could easily see the presence of Neptune — its gravity cut up a little break in the dust . We ’re hoping our models will facilitate us espy Neptune - sized worlds around other whizz . ”
The junk is generated as Kuiper Belt objects smash into and pulverize each other , release unnumbered icy subatomic particle that build into a massive rubble swarm . The dust then travels throughout the Solar System , although it ’s unclear precisely how , because the dust is regulate by some unmanageable to predict push button - and - pull effects from solar winding and sunlight .
Kuchner and his squad have now done what some idea was unsufferable by simulate the motion of these debris grains . Using a NASA supercomputer , they feign the movement of about 75,000 particles set out in size from a grain of sand to the particle in roll of tobacco . They then used these simulation to build infrared views of how our Solar System would look to outside observers . you may see the detritus swarm at several different point in our Solar System ’s history in the figure above .
These pretense reveal that collisions have mould the Kuiper Belt into the broad , bleary disk we see today , but that is n’t always how it look . It was once a sleeker , denser ring that was well brighter – and well-nigh identical to similar debris disc we ’ve spot around other stars . The team hop to run similar feigning for the disc around other stars , which may help us understand what role these disks act as in the formation of planet .
[ The Astronomical Journal ]
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