The Sweetest Real Estate In The Solar System

Way back in 2019, the New Horizons space probe passed by the Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth, a 20-mile-wide chunk of ice that bears an uncanny resemblance to a snowman. Arrokoth is thus officially the farthest object ever closely observed and explored, and unless a new target for New Horizons to be pointed at is found in the next few years (an unlikely scenario, considering how little fuel New Horizons has left), Arrokoth will hold that record for a very long time.

 NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

While the snowman resemblance is kind of neat, there really isn't much to Arrokoth to excite the average person. It's a chunk of ice floating around billions of miles away. However, scientists were intrigued by the object's color; Arrokoth is a rusty red, which isn't generally a color that ice becomes. The theory at the time was that the solar wind had converted Arrokoth's various ices into organic molecules, and that these organic molecules were responsible for the object's unusual color.

Unfortunately, New Horizons couldn't turn around for a second look to answer this very important question, but it didn't need to, courtesy of a new study. The experiment the researchers undertook was shockingly simple: Build a miniature Kuiper Belt object, bombard it with high-energy electrons to simulate billions of years worth of solar wind, and observe the results.

The first thing they noticed after irradiating their chunk of ice was the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are actually quite common throughout the universe. But beyond that, they found a couple surprises, namely a sugar you're familiar with: glucose. The very same glucose, in fact, that your body depends on. So, if you went out there, dug up a little chunk, and licked it, the ice would actually taste sweet. It's those various sugars, the researchers said, that give Arrokoth its unusual color.

But before you suit up for the longest trip to the candy store ever undertaken, there's a catch to Arrokoth's sweetness. During their test, the researchers also detected glycerol, which is an important ingredient in soap. And that's not such a nice thing to eat. Unless, of course, you've just dropped the F-dash-dash-dash. Ralphie would probably appreciate a sweet-tasting soap ... so long as he doesn't get his tongue stuck to it.

New Horizons Completes Fly-by of Ultima Thule

What I really want to know is if the timing was purposeful or not. Having New Horizons complete this historic fly-by on New Year's Day just seems a little too convenient.

Anyway, we have our first actual image of a Kuiper Belt object! And it's ... a red snowman!

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Obviously, this isn't the greatest picture of all time, and more will be coming. New Horizons is beaming back data at a very low power, so it's going to take more than a year to get everything back from the encounter. Hey, New Horizons is 4 billion miles away, you gotta be patient with these things.

But I'm sure we'll be getting more and better pictures in the days to come. I doubt this will be the last time I write about little Ultima Thule.

Strange Dwarf Planet Gets Even Stranger

The dwarf planet Haumea, orbiting out in the Kuiper Belt, is an interesting place. For one, there's a big pink spot on its surface, the origin of which is a complete mystery. Then things get really weird. Haumea is a fairly big Kuiper Belt Object with about a third of the mass of Pluto. The length of its longest axis is over 2,300 kilometers, almost equal to that of Pluto, but the average radius is 700 kilometers, 500 less than Pluto's. So, what's going on? Well, despite being big enough for gravity to pull Haumea into a sphere, it isn't. It looks more like this.

Why does it look like a football? We're not completely sure, but considering Haumea makes a full rotation in 4 hours (faster than any other object larger than 100 kilometers), that may have something to do with it.

So, what new news could we have gotten from this icy little football world? It's simple, really, Haumea also has rings. According to observation, this ring system is 43 miles wide, and orbits about 620 miles above the surface. My question, which isn't really addressed, is whether or not the ring system would be circular or oval shaped. I'm guessing circular, and the distance either varies or the rings are aligned so that they could always be 620 miles away. Oval shaped rings would be weird. Anyway, this just adds another mystery to this little dwarf planet which I can't imagine will get a definitive answer anytime soon. Do you see us sending a spacecraft there in the next 50 years? I don't. It's a long way away, and there are a lot bigger questions other than "why is this place football-shaped, and why does it have rings?"

Theoretical Planets Are Starting To Stack Up In The Outer Solar System

You may remember that about a year and a half ago, I wrote about a theoretical ninth planet way out in the outer solar system. It's thought to be an ice giant, just like Uranus and Neptune, and to orbit hundreds of AU away. If anything, that theory has gained evidence over the past 17 months. This is not about that planet. This is about a new theoretical planet orbiting in the outer solar system. Yes, if it turns out that both these planets actually exist, we'll have ten planets.

Credit: Heather Roper/Lunar and Planetary Laboratory

So, what's the story with Planet Ten? Why do we need it? Simple, it all comes down to those pesky Kuiper Belt objects again. They're not behaving the way they should be, their orbits are not in alignment with the plane of the solar system. Something is moving them, and it isn't Planet Nine, which is too far away to have the observed effect. So now we have Planet Ten, thought to be much smaller than its theoretical sibling, weighing in somewhere between Earth and Mars and looking essentially like a giant Pluto. Also, Planet Ten orbits much closer to the sun than Planet Nine, to the tune of several dozen AU rather than several hundred. So actually, Planet Ten would be the ninth planet, and Planet Nine would be the tenth planet, and that's not going to be confusing at all.

I wouldn't worry too much about having to memorize two new planet names any time soon though. It's easier to find planets around other stars than to find them around our own at this point. These planets, if they do exist, will move incredibly slowly, and give off almost no light at all. As the article says, we'll see what happens when the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is finished and starts searching for KPOs. Until then, there's still only eight planets.