Strange things are happening in the Kuiper Belt…

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0:00- If you're older than 30, you probably remember the trauma

0:02of being told Pluto isn't a planet anymore.

0:05It's time to stop blaming him. Okay?

0:07Get over it,

0:08'cause it turns out that Pluto is the least

0:09of our issues.

0:10Out past Neptune in an area called the Kuiper Belt,

0:13there are a lot of things that just don't make sense.

0:16The Kuiper Belt is sort of like the asteroid belt

0:18between Mars and Jupiter, but bigger.

0:20It's full of remains from when our solar system formed

0:23around 4.6 billion years ago.

0:25Because it's so cold out there,

0:26lots of those remnants are basically frozen time capsules.

0:29from that ancient time.

0:30The Kuiper Belt's home

0:31to five dwarf planets that we know of,

0:34including the largest and most famous one, Pluto.

0:36One of those dwarf planets is named Quaoar,

0:39(ship whooshes) which comes from the mythology

0:40of the Tongva people in the Los Angeles basin.

0:42It even has its own moon called Weywot,

0:44named for the son of Quaoar.

0:46Far too many vowels in that word.

0:47Astronomers discovered that Quaoar has two rings,

0:50but Quaoar's rings are really far from the planet.

0:53According to astronomers' models,

0:54those rings should have gathered together to form a moon,

0:56but they haven't, and we still don't know why.

0:58It's making us rewrite our rules about planetary science.

1:01And there might even be a third ring around Quaoar,

1:03so the mystery just keeps on growing.

1:05And Quaoar isn't the only odd object in the Kuiper Belt.

1:07This red planet is called Arrokoth,

1:10which means sky in Powhatan,

1:12but it's also known as the space snowman,

1:14because, I mean, just look at it.

1:15This shape is so confusing,

1:17astronomers had to develop totally new computer models

1:19to understand how objects in the Kuiper Belt were formed.

1:22So maybe the Kuiper Belt is weird,

1:23because it's frozen in time,

1:24or maybe we're the weird ones who just need

1:26to figure out how to understand it.

1:28Maybe a little bit of both.

1:29You tell us, and follow me for more cool science videos.

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Strange things are happening in the Kuiper Belt…

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