First Kuiper Belt Family Found

First Kuiper Belt Family Found

TNRTB Archive – Retained for reference information

Analysis by a team of Caltech scientists promises to increase understanding of the outer solar system and will likely illuminate more fine-tuning. The group from Caltech identified the first Kuiper Belt family (located beyond the orbit of Neptune). Scientists believe these ”families” of objects form as a collision breaks a more massive body into a number of smaller fragments similar to the way a giant impact formed the Earth-Moon system. Detailed studies of the newly discovered family provide much-needed observational constraints on the formative stages of the Kuiper Belt and additional data to test scientists’ understanding of how collisions affect planetary-sized bodies. RTB’s creation model predicts that insights derived from these future studies will continue to support the idea of a supernatural Creator fashioning a solar system capable of sustaining a life-support planet like Earth.