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Published online 15 July 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.693
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Asteroid belt's icy fringe explained
'Primordial objects' may have been captured during planetary realignment.
A reshuffle of the planets in the early Solar System may explain how ancient ice balls ended up in the asteroid belt.
This new hypothesis, based on a popular theory of Solar System formation known as the 'Nice model', upends a previously held view that the asteroid belt is the remnant of a protoplanetary disc that surrounded the Sun early in its evolution.
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