Many bodies in the solar system have rings. Gas giants, dwarf planets and even asteroids. These examples should give a complete picture of the physics, leading to models of how rings form and prevent the material in them from falling onto planets or condensing onto the moon. is ready.
But the findings described in a paper published today suggest that something (or something) is deeply troubled. A dwarf planet called 50000 Kuoaor, which orbits beyond Neptune, appears to have a ring that shouldn’t be at 7.4 times her planet’s radius. We have a few ideas as to why the ring remains in this location, but nothing conclusive at this time.
ring signal
Quaoa resides in the Kuiper Belt, the region beyond the orbit of Neptune. The Kuiper belt is sparsely populated with Pluto-like dwarf planets due to the low density of the ice material and the lack of giant planets around it. Despite its low density, the Kuiper belt is large enough that there are many objects in it, and it is only recently that we have developed the telescope hardware necessary to catalog them.
About half the size of Pluto (1,100 km in diameter), Kua Oa was discovered in 2002. Subsequent observations that tracked Kua Oa as it passed in front of a distant star showed that it was accompanied by a small moon named Weiwot. Despite its size, this was not particularly surprising as many moons are now discovered orbiting Kuiper Belt objects. There was a single observation that was suggestive. This is also what we have seen in other Kuiper belt objects.
For the new study, a large international team of scientists calculated when Kua-oa will pass in front of additional stars and arranged observations for that time. In these images, just before Kua-oa passed in front of the star, there was a small but distinct dip in the star’s brightness, followed by her second dip at even intervals after the planet passed. A clear description of these symmetrical depressions is the ring.
There are two possible configurations for such a ring that are consistent with this data, but one of those configurations places the ring in the same plane as the orbit of the moon, Weywot. Researchers expect this to be the configuration of the Qua-or system, as it is the most typical configuration seen on other planets. The amount of light blocked by the ring was the same for a wide range of wavelengths. This suggests that the rings are mainly composed of grains larger than 10 micrometers in diameter, but not very large. Sun.
Repeated observations suggest that the quaor rings are also irregular. This is also seen in other rings, where small bodies up to 1 kilometer in diameter orbiting the ring change their shape due to gravity. The growth of these bodies is limited by their tendency to collide with each other and collapse into small particles typical of the rest of the ring.
