NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has made a groundbreaking discovery in the distant Kuiper Belt, a region of icy bodies beyond Neptune. The telescope has found that a system of asteroids, designated 148780 Altjira, may be triplets rather than twins as previously suspected. This discovery challenges our understanding of how these objects form and could lead to improved models of their movements.
The “three-body problem” – first identified by Isaac Newton in 1687 – is a complex puzzle that has puzzled astronomers for centuries. The Kuiper Belt, home to thousands of icy bodies, is believed to be filled with three-body systems, including the closest stars to Earth and other celestial bodies.
The Altjira system, located approximately 40 times farther from the sun than Earth, initially seemed to show two KBOs orbiting each other. However, further observations revealed that one of these objects was actually a pair of closely linked asteroids. The discovery took 17 years of data from Hubble and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to make.
This finding supports a theory that Kuiper Belt objects are formed through the direct gravitational collapse of matter surrounding the infant sun around 4.5 billion years ago. Other theories, including collisions between larger bodies, do not explain the formation of three-body systems like Altjira.
The discovery of the Altjira system has significant implications for our understanding of the Kuiper Belt and its objects. The system joins Pluto and Arrokoth as one of the most heavily studied bodies in the region. Upcoming observations by the James Webb Space Telescope will provide valuable insights into the Altjira system, particularly during an upcoming eclipsing season that will last for 10 years.
The research was published on Tuesday (March 4) in The Planetary Science Journal and has sparked excitement among astronomers.
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/hubble-telescope-discovers-3-body-220000305.html