Awesomeness

This kinda made my day... well, a lot of things made my day this aftenoon, but this seemed most bloggable and deals with space, so it will probs give me good luck on my finals tomorrow...

Via twitter:

jaxeraction: Is it possible that there is an object larger than Pluto in the Kuiper Belt that we haven't detected yet?

plutokiller: @jaxeraction I'd say ~30% chance. Beyond the Kuiper belt I'd say 100% chance of more things bigger than Pluto.

But really, its a question I've been wondering about for the past couple weeks. Pluto was basically discovered by accident. There are perturbations in Uranus's orbit which led to the discovery of Neptune in 1846. Imprecision in the measurements of these perturbations led people to believe that there was a large ninth planet. Of course, over time, the measurements were improved and this turned out not to be the case. In the mean time, the position of the non-existent planet was calculated and Pluto just happened to be near the predicted location when it was discovered in 1930.

So basically, it was just discovered by lucky coincidence. Which led me to wonder whether or not there were other comparatively large objects floating around out there and we just haven't seen them. Eris is certainly bigger, but it is not technically part of the Kuiper Belt. Makemake and Haumea are both KBOs, but neither is as large as Pluto. I would be delighted if they discovered a KBO larger than Pluto; it would basically be the last nail in the coffin as far as Pluto the planet is concerned. But really, over the past couple months, the Kuiper belt has started fascinating me. There's so much we don't know, the objects are so small and distant that even detecting them is extremely hard.