This is CBS, I Am the World, I'm John Bachelor.

The solar system we live in is lucky because the inner rocky planets are protected by Jupiter

and Saturn is the theory.

From the great bombardment that started the solar system perhaps, but certainly from the

comets that come hurtling out of the depths of the solar system, and can make a very bad

day in France if one of them hits us, which might have happened once upon a time, 66

million years ago.

So whatever hit us then, and has hit us since then, comes from a place called the Kuiper

Belt, which is beyond the planet Neptune.

Yes, yes, there's Pluto, and Pluto is in an odd orbit to the plane, and probably comes

from the Kuiper Belt.

But right now we're going to explore the Kuiper Belt because there are large mysteries

in it.

This is Hotel Mars, Episode N. David Livingston, Dr. Spaces, my colleague and co-host, and

we're very pleased to be welcoming the astronomer, Patrick Sophia LaCafka.

He is in Tokyo where he's a professor in applied sociology at Kindai University near Osaka,

but he's published most recently an explanation for the Kuiper Belt's dwarf planets and other

objects that are in strange orbits to the plane of the solar system.

Think of the planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, the inner planets.

We're all in the same plane, and we move around together.

That's why it's fun to be an astrologist.

However, in the Kuiper Belt, that is not the case.

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