The Solar System Has Thousands More Death Star Sized Objects Just Beyond Neptune

turns out that our Kuiper belt is vastly larger and that means a massive number of stable planetoids out there.

These are all engineering prospects if not already so utilized.  sooner than later, we will be able to build gravity floors and that allows conversion into living space for huge populations.  It also means manufacturing material to hand anywhere there.

It also explains low evidence of intense alien activity close to us.  We are more watched, than interacted with.  with this amount of real estate, it is best to establish out there beyond risk of contact.  We will do the same with other inhabited solar systems.

The Solar System Has Thousands More Death Star Sized Objects Just Beyond Neptune

The Solar System Has Thousands More Death Star Sized Objects Just Beyond Neptune

February 27, 2024 by Brian Wang

The Solar system is bigger than NASA thought. There are a lot of huge objects at the edge of the solar system that we have not seen but can indirectly estimate.

When astronomers say Kuiper Belt Object think larger asteroid belt beyond Neptune. This larger belt includes Pluto and its moon and they are far bigger than anything in the Asteroid belt. The Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is smaller. The estimation of the mass in the Kuiper belt was about 2% of the Earth or about 1.5 times the moon. The Asteroid belt is about 3% of the mass of the moon which is about 81 times less than the Earth. The Kuiper Belt should have 40-60 times more material than than Asteroid belt.

The average distance between 1-10 kilometer sized objects in the Kuiper Belt is about the distance from the Earth to the moon.

The Oort comet cloud is thought to occupy a vast space somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 AU (0.03 and 0.08 ly) from the Sun to as far out as 50,000 AU (0.79 ly) or even 100,000 to 200,000 AU (1.58 to 3.16 ly). Oort is estimated to be ten to 100 times the mass of the Earth. Each on kilometer or bigger object in the Oort would on average be as far apart as the Earth from Mars.

Data from the New Horizons space probe and the Japanese Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, have discovered a number KBOs (kuiper belt objects) far beyond the expected outer edge of the Kuiper Belt. This outer edge (where the density of objects starts to decline) was thought to be at about 50 AU, but new evidence suggests the belt may extend to 80 AU, or farther. One AU is the distance from the Earth to the sun and is 93 million miles.

The Kuiper Belt is a doughnut-shaped region of icy bodies that extends beyond Neptune’s orbit. It’s a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units to approximately 80 AU from the Sun.

The Kuiper belt is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger. It now believed to be 50 times as wide and 60-600 times as massive. The estimate was that there were 100,000 Death Star sized objects or larger in the Kuiper Belt. The original Star Wars Death Star was about 120 kilometers wide. The estimate was about 100,000 objects that were about 100 kilometers in diameter or larger. The volume of the Kuiper belt is now known to be far larger.

The thickness of the Kuiper Belt is approximately 10 AU.

This means the Kuiper belt is a 5 billion mile wide donut and not a 2 billion wide donut.

Scientists are looking at other possible reasons for the high SDC dust readings. One possibility, perhaps less likely, is radiation pressure and other factors pushing dust created in the inner Kuiper Belt out past 50 AU. New Horizons could also have encountered shorter-lived ice particles that cannot reach the inner parts of the solar system and were not yet accounted for in the current models of the Kuiper Belt.

“These new scientific results from New Horizons may be the first time that any spacecraft has discovered a new population of bodies in our solar system,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. “I can’t wait to see how much farther out these elevated Kuiper Belt dust levels go.”

The effect of Kuiper belt gravity on objects may not change the mass approximation that much but the far larger thickness will change calculations and approximations to something higher. It could possibly increase the estimate to 300,000 Death Star sized objects instead of 100,000. I think the new estimate will likely end up being 130,000 to 200,000 such large objects.



The old Kuiper belt volume would have been about 20,000 cubic AU less 7000 cubic AU for about 13000 cubic AU.



Now the Kuiper belt volume is about 50,000 cubic AI less 7000 cubic AU for about 43000 Cubic AU.

This is an example of how little we know about the size and structure of things in the solar system. Just like we keep confirming the discovery of dozens more moons for Saturn and Jupiter every few years.