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Nature 422, 30-31 (6 March 2003) | doi:10.1038/422030a
Planetary science: Kuiper-belt interlopers
A. Morbidelli & H. F. Levison
Abstract
Objects in the Kuiper belt, which lies beyond Neptune, occur as two distinct populations. One group may have migrated from a region closer to the Sun, caught by Neptune's gravity as it wandered in the early Solar System.
When astronomers first postulated the existence of a belt of small bodies beyond Neptune — now called the Kuiper belt — they imagined a disk of planetesimals (primordial icy bodies) in which the conditions of the early Solar System were perfectly preserved. But when these objects were finally discovered, astronomers realized that this is not so: the Kuiper belt is dynamically excited, as if something had kicked it very hard.
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