After the discovery of
Pluto in 1930, many astronomers became
intrigued by the possibility of finding a
10th planet circling the sun. Cloaked by
the vast distances of interplanetary
space, the mysterious "Planet X"
might have remained hidden from even the
best telescopic sight, or so these
scientists reasoned. Yet decades passed
without detection, and most researchers
began to accept that the solar system was
restricted to the familiar planets.But many scientists began
seriously rethinking their notions of the
solar system in 1992, when we identified
a small celestial body -just a few
hundred kilometers across-sited farther
from the sun than any of the known
planets. Since that time, we have
identified nearly three dozen such
objects circling through the outer solar
system. A host of similar objects is
likely to be traveling with them, making
up the so-called Kuiper belt), a region
named for Dutch-American astronomer
Gerard P. Kuiper, who, in 1951,
championed the idea that the solar system
contains this distant family.
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