Mystery of 'Fossil Worlds' and Comet Birth

[Sayonara]

From BBC.co.uk:

 

The Hubble telescope has discovered the smallest, most distant objects in the solar system - three ice bodies which are relics of the formation of the solar system.

 

Such bodies can become comets if they approach the sun, as the heat form the soalr wind blasts away their surface as a billowing gas.

 

The article states:

 

"The planets formed over four billion years ago from a cloud of gas and dust that surrounded the nascent Sun.

 

Tugged by gravity, the fragments of ice and dust stuck together to form lumps that grew from pebbles to boulders to city- or continent-sized so-called planetesimals.

 

Around 1950, astronomers Gerard Kuiper and Kenneth Edgeworth proposed that in the region beyond Neptune there are no planets capable of dispersing leftover planetesimals.

 

They postulated that there should be a zone - now called the Kuiper Belt - filled with small, icy bodies."

 

Astronomers are puzzled because while there ought to be very large numbers of these objects, only 1000 have been found since the first observation in 1992.

 

Collisions between Kuiper Belt objects may have reduced many to dust, which could explain the lack of identifications being made.

 

Full article here.

 

Note: Image shows comet C/2002 V1 passing the sun during its 37,000 year orbital path, just before being hit by a massive solar eruption. Article.

[blike]

Sayonara has figured out the image-in-news-post trick

 

Interesting, but I wonder if theres anything we can learn from 'blocks of ice' floating in space.

 

I guess the main point is that "Astronomers are puzzled because while there ought to be very large numbers of these objects, only 1000 have been found since the first observation in 1992."

[NSX]

blike said in post #2 :

Sayonara has figured out the image-in-news-post trick

 

How do you do that?