14 DAY TRIAL // A new astronomical investigation offers evidence that disproves the Nice model, a theory that blames Neptune for the large population of binary objects in the Kuiper Belt.
The model, which is currently widely accepted by the international scientific community, holds that the gas giant was responsible for knocking a large number of space rocks beyond the orbit of Pluto.
Those objects are classified as planetoids, and are collectively called Cold Classical Kuiper Belt objects (KBO). A large number of them exist in binary pairs, similarly to how stars form binary systems.
The new research, that showed this view to be deficient in explaining what happened, was authored by University of Victoria in British Columbia PhD student Alex Parker, Universe Today reports.
Data in the study shows that the Nice Model is wrong in assuming that it was migrations that Neptune made in the early days of the solar system that are responsible for the large number of KBO pairs.
“Kuiper binaries paint a different picture. I should title my talk as ‘Neptune not guilty of harassment’ or perhaps more accurately, “Planet Neptune acquitted of one count of harassment’,” Parker said.
He presented his findings in Pasadena, California, at the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Sciences meeting.
At first, the expert presented the Nice Model in more detail. One of its main provisions is that the Kuiper Belt was a lot closer to the Sun at first, beginning just beyond the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.
Then, as Neptune began to move farther away from the Sun, migration resonances captured some of the KO objects, and then sent them into the chaotic orbits they have today.
But a decade-long survey that Parker conducted with Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics expert and thesis supervisor Dr. J. J Kavelaars showed an entirely different conclusion.
“Thirty per cent of Kuiper Belt Objects are binaries, some in very wide orbits around each other in a slow waltz, weakly bound to their partners,” Parker revealed at a press conference.
“These binaries should have been destroyed if the Kuiper Belt Objects were thrown out of solar system,” he went on to say.
“Pluto and Charon are the most famous of these binaries and since their orbits can be affected by their environment, we can use them to test what the interplanetary environment is like and what it was like in the past,” Parker argued.
The new investigation also included a computer model of the early solar system, which experts said supports their view of how the Kuiper Belt evolved.
“Understanding the structure and history of the Kuiper Belt helps us better understand how the planets in our solar system formed, and how planets around other stars may be forming today,” Parker added.