Question
Here is the question : WHAT DWARF PLANET WAS ALMOST NAMED THE “10TH PLANET” IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM?
Option
Here is the option for the question :
- Phobos
- Pandora
- Eris
- Ganymede
The Answer:
And, the answer for the the question is :
Explanation:
Eris, the Greek goddess of disorder, was discovered in 2005 and given that name. When this cold rock was discovered, the space community was split on whether or not it should be considered the tenth planet. Some people wanted Eris to replace Pluto as the tenth planet because it’s bigger than Pluto, while others didn’t think either celestial body was worthy. In the end, Pluto lost its ‘planet’ status in 2006, and both Pluto and Eris are now considered ‘dwarf planets.’
The Kuiper Belt is a region of the solar system located just beyond the orbit of Neptune. This belt is named after Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who first predicted its existence in the 1950s. The Kuiper Belt is a vast collection of icy objects, including dwarf planets, comets, and other small bodies. It is believed to be the source of many of the comets that pass through the inner solar system.
The Kuiper Belt is similar to the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter, but it is much larger and more distant. The asteroid belt is a region of the solar system that contains millions of rocky objects, but the Kuiper Belt is thought to contain billions of icy objects. The Kuiper Belt is also much farther from the sun than the asteroid belt, with its outer edge extending up to 50 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. (One astronomical unit is the distance from the sun to Earth.)
The existence of the Kuiper Belt was first confirmed in 1992, when astronomers discovered an object called 1992 QB1. Since then, thousands of other objects have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt, including several dwarf planets such as Pluto, Eris, and Makemake. These dwarf planets are similar in size and composition to Pluto, which was once considered the ninth planet in the solar system before being reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.
The Kuiper Belt is believed to have formed early in the history of the solar system, when the giant planets were still in the process of forming. It is thought that the Kuiper Belt objects were unable to accrete into larger bodies because of the gravitational influence of Jupiter, which prevented them from coming together. This may explain why the Kuiper Belt contains so many small objects rather than a few larger ones.
The study of the Kuiper Belt has provided valuable insights into the formation and evolution of the solar system. By studying the composition and orbits of Kuiper Belt objects, astronomers can learn more about the conditions that existed in the early solar system and how the planets formed. The Kuiper Belt is also of interest because it contains many primitive objects that have been relatively undisturbed since their formation, making them valuable targets for scientific study.
In recent years, several spacecraft have visited objects in the Kuiper Belt, including NASA’s New Horizons mission, which flew by Pluto in 2015 and later visited another Kuiper Belt object called Arrokoth in 2019. These missions have provided us with detailed images and data about these distant and mysterious objects, shedding new light on the history and composition of the outer solar system.
the Kuiper Belt is a fascinating and important region of the solar system that is still being explored and studied by astronomers today. Its icy objects provide us with valuable clues about the formation and evolution of the solar system, and they offer a glimpse into the distant and mysterious outer reaches of