«With cheap, fast spacecraft,» says Guillochon, «we could send one out to every asteroid in the asteroid belt or to every Pluto -
like object in the outer solar system.
It is likely that the object lacks water or ice and has been reddened by the impact of cosmic rays over millions of years,
like the objects in the outer solar system.
Not exact matches
It gives further evidence of how Titan, despite its location
in orbit around a gas giant
in the
outer Solar System, is one of the most Earth -
like objects ever studied.
Like the three other big
outer -
solar -
system objects discovered
in the past three years — including 560 - mile - wide Varuna, found
in 2000 — Quaoar resides
in the Kuiper belt, a wide swath of asteroids located past Neptune.
The analogy I
like is that these
objects in the
outer solar system are the blood splattered on the wall after some horrendous murder.
«Currently
objects in these
outer regions are frozen
in our own
solar system,
like Europa and Enceladus — moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn.»
While the presence of the calcium - carbonate is still
in question, the paper shows strong evidence that the accreted material is almost certainly coming from the
outer layers of a planet -
like object and that white dwarf stars hold promise
in informing on the structure of planets outside of the
Solar system.
Laughlin also shared how the folks at Keck Observatory are helping search for new
objects like Planet 9
in the dim
outer realms of our own
solar system.