Do we know how many objects are in the Khyper Belt?

Is it dark energy? Please tell us.

There might have actually been another Neptune-sized planet in our solar system that got ejected.

Hello, welcome to the supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me,

science journalist Izzy Clark and with

astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smithers. This month, we're journeying beyond the outer planets,

the Kuiper Bell, and exploring how it holds the secrets to our own solar systems formation.

So pack some snacks, it's going to be a long and rocky road trip. Plus, we'll be joined by an engineer from New Horizons to tell us about the mission that's seeing it all up close.

So Robert Massey, he's here with us, the deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society.

How did the Khyper Belt get its name?

And I've noticed that I've said Kipa belt and Becky says

Kuiper. So let's put that one to her. Oh, never listen to how I pronounce anything. I get

everything wrong. Well, the story is actually it was proposed as a concept before the discovery of

Pluto by the American astronomer Frederick Leonard. And then the British astronomer Kenneth Edgeworth,

and I think about 1943, was someone again suggesting material in the early outer solar system

that wouldn't have been close enough together to form planets. So we'd be left in a belt beyond

Neptune. But the belt was named for the Dutch astronomer Gerard Koiper, which is what I'm going

with, who oddly didn't actually believe that any of that material would be left, because at the time, he went with the general assumption that Pluto had about the mass of the earth. It's actually a lot smaller and it cleared away the materials. So he didn't actually believe there would have been a Koipa belt, and yet that's what it's named for. So there have been efforts over the years to call it the Edgeworth Coipa Belt, and some people will do that from time to time. And I think the International Astronomical Union even debated whether to make that name change, but didn't agree it. So most of the time we just stick with Kuiper Belt because it's simple. But Edgeworth definitely deserves some credit as well. I'm amazed that astronomers haven't tried to make it like the EKB yet,

like not trying to make it into an acronym like we do with everything else.

There is still time.

There is, isn't there?

It's still time.

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