Two red objects between Mars and Jupiter could explain the formation of the solar system

A group of scientists have discovered two unusually red objects in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, and they could have come from further afield in the solar system. These objects – called 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia – are redder than the redder known objects in the asteroid belt and may have migrated to the region from beyond Neptune. If this is true, then they could provide insight into the chaos of the early solar system and how the solar system as we know it today was born.

The team led by Sunao Hasegawa of JAXA identified the objects through observations collected at the infrared telescope installation and the Seoul National University’s astronomical observatory, according to the article they published. Like The New York Times points out that most objects in the inner solar system tend to reflect blue light because they lack or contain very little organic material. Objects in the Outer Solar System such as the Kuiper Belt, however, tend to be more red. This is because they contain a lot of organic material like carbon and methane, which may have been the building blocks of our planet. As you may know, the Kuiper Belt is the region extending from Neptune’s orbit where you can find vestiges of the formation of our solar system.

If Pompeja and Justitia were truly grafts from beyond Nepture, then they would serve as evidence for the hypothesis that a fraction of the asteroids between Jupiter and Mars originated from the Kuiper Belt. They would also support the set of theories, called the Nice model, about how our gas giants settled in their orbits. The Nice model says our giant planets formed closer to the Sun until instability forced Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn to move outward and Jupiter to move inward. The event would have caused the dispersion and displacement of asteroids rich in organic matter in the solar system.

Of course, more observations and evidence are needed to be able to prove that the two objects originate from the Kuiper belt. The good thing is that since the asteroid belt is much closer to us than Neptune, it would take less time for a spacecraft to reach them if ever the Earth space agencies decided to send a probe to study them from above. closer.