The
possibility of a body which today we now know as the Kuiper Belt was first
conceived in the mind of an Irish astronomer by the name of Kenneth Edgeworth
(on left) when he "speculated in 1943 that
the distribution of the solar system’s small bodies was not bounded by the
present distance of Pluto." (Encyclopedia Britannica
Online)
The
existence of the belt would remain hypothetical until the prerequisite
technology could be made, a development that would take approximately 50 years
to arrive.
A Dutch-American astronomer who demonstrated
in 1951 that there must be large residual amount of small icy bodies left over
from the days when the planets were still forming beyond Neptune, now
considered to be the farthest planet from the sun.
A Dutch Astronomer
Jan Oort (on left) hypothesized the existence of a distant sphere of bodies
that surrounded the Solar System and could, based on an analysis of their orbits
could account for Comets with periods greater than 200 years. However, other comets with periods of 20
years or less could not be explained by existence of a cloud as hypothesized by
Jan Oort.
Kuiper first noted that
comets with a period of 20 years or less not only orbit the sun in the same direction
as the planets around the sun and are close to the ecliptic plain in their
orbits. Thus, they would require a source
not only closer than the Oort Cloud, but one that was flatter as well.
The
theory received further support in 1988 by American Astronomer Martin Dunkin
and his coworker’s when they “clearly restated” Kuiper’s hypothesized belt,
which is described by Encyclopedia Britannica to be “best argument for the existence of the Kuiper belt until its direct
detection.”
Sources:
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