Related papers: Interpreting the Densities of the Kuiper Belt's Dw…
Haumea, a rapidly rotating elongated dwarf planet (~ 1500 km in diameter), has two satellites and is associated with a "family" of several smaller Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) in similar orbits. All members of the Haumea system share a water…
The population of the Kuiper Belt within 50 AU of the Sun has likely been severely depleted by gravitational perturbations from the giant planets, particularly Neptune. The density of Kuiper Belt objects is expected to be two orders of…
The Kuiper belt is a remnant of the primordial Solar System. Measurements of its size distribution constrain its accretion and collisional history, and the importance of material strength of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). Small, sub-km sized,…
The Kuiper belt object Orcus and its satellite Vanth form an unusual system in the Kuiper belt. Orcus is amongst the largest objects known in the Kuiper belt, but the relative size of Vanth is much larger than that of the tiny satellites of…
The non-resonant Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) between the 3:2 and 2:1 Neptunian mean motion resonances can be largely divided between a cold classical belt (CCB) and a hot classical belt (HCB). A notable difference between these two…
The Trojan asteroids provide a unique perspective on the history of Solar System. As a large population of small bodies, they record important gravitational interactions and dynamical evolution of the Solar System. In the past decade,…
We combine several constraints provided by the crater records on Arrokoth and the worlds of the Pluto system to compute the size-frequency distribution (SFD) of the crater production function for craters with diameter D<10km. For this…
We describe analytical and numerical collisional evolution calculations for the size distribution of icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt. For a wide range of bulk properties, initial masses, and orbital parameters, our results yield power-law…
This paper reviews coagulation models for planet formation in the Kuiper Belt, emphasizing links to recent observations of our and other solar systems. At heliocentric distances of 35-50 AU, single annulus and multiannulus planetesimal…
The Pluto-Charon system provides a broad variety of constraints on planetary formation, composition, chemistry, and evolution. Pluto was the first body to be discovered in what is now known as the Kuiper belt, its orbit ultimately becoming…
The formation of the largest objects in the Kuiper belt, with measured densities of ~1.5 g cm-3 and higher, from the coagulation of small bodies, with measured densities below 1 g cm-3 is difficult to explain without invoking significant…
Large Kuiper Belt Objects are conventionally thought to have formed out of a massive planetesimal belt that is a few thousand times its current mass. Such a picture, however, is incompatible with multiple lines of evidence. Here, we present…
We propose a chemical and dynamical process to explain the surface colors of the Kuiper belt. In our hypothesis, the initial bulk compositions of the bodies themselves can be quite diverse -- as is seen in comets -- but the early surface…
It appears that at least several percent of large Kuiper belt objects are members of wide binaries. Physical collisions are too infrequent to account for their formation. Collisionless gravitational interactions are more promising. These…
Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) are thought to be the remnant of the early solar system, and their size distribution provides an opportunity to explore the formation and evolution of the outer solar system. In particular, the size distribution…
The flyby of Pluto and Charon by the New Horizons spacecraft provided high-resolution images of cratered surfaces embedded in the Kuiper belt, an extensive region of bodies orbiting beyond Neptune. Impact craters on Pluto and Charon were…
The Classical Kuiper Belt is populated by a group of objects with low inclination orbits, reddish colors and usually belonging to a binary system. This so called Cold Classical Kuiper Belt is considered to have been formed in situ from…
Recent observations have revealed an unexpectedly high binary fraction among the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) that populate the Kuiper-belt. The discovered binaries have four characteristics they comprise a few percent of the TNOs, the…
Measures of exoplanet bulk densities indicate that small exoplanets with radius less than 3 Earth radii ($R_\oplus$) range from low-density sub-Neptunes containing volatile elements to higher density rocky planets with Earth-like or…
Many debris discs reveal a two-component structure, with a cold outer and a warm inner component. While the former are likely massive analogues of the Kuiper belt, the origin of the latter is still a matter of debate. In this work we…