Scientists have long struggled to explain the existence of the solar system’s “detached objects,” which have orbits that tilt like seesaws and often cluster in one part of the night sky. (Credit: Steven Burrows/JILA)
Two new studies by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder may help to solve one of the biggest mysteries about the dark, icy bodies of the outer solar system: why so many of them don’t circle the sun the way they should.
The outermost reaches of our solar system are a strange place – filled with dark and icy bodies with nicknames like Sedna, Biden and The Goblin, each of which span several hundred miles across.
The orbits of these planetary oddities, which scientists call “detached objects,” tilt and buckle out of the plane of the solar system, amon...
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