Although he is best known for discovering the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930, the first object to be discovered in what would later be identified as the Kuiper belt, Tombaugh also discovered many asteroids ; he also called for serious scientific research of unidentified flying objects.

Following the discovery, starting in the 1990s, of other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto began to be seen not as a planet orbiting alone at 40 AU, but as the largest of a group of icy bodies in that region of space.

Robert L. Forward's Camelot 30K describes an ecosystem on the surface of Kuiper belt objects that is based on a fluorocarbon chemistry with OF < sub > 2 </ sub > as the principal solvent instead of H < sub > 2 </ sub > O.

Kuiper belt objects are known to be rich in organic compounds such as tholins, so some form of life existing on their surfaces is not entirely implausible – though perhaps not going so far as to develop natural internal nuclear reactors, as have Forward's.

A classical Kuiper belt object, also called a cubewano ( " QB1-o ") is a low-eccentricity Kuiper belt object ( KBO ) that orbits beyond Neptune and is not controlled by an orbital resonance with Neptune.

Furthermore, there is evidence that the Kuiper belt has an ' edge ', in that an apparent lack of low-inclination objects beyond 47-49 AU was suspected as early as 1998 and shown with more data in 2001.

* David Jewitt's Kuiper belt site

Known objects in the Kuiper belt, derived from data from the Minor Planet Center.

The scattered objects between Jupiter's orbit and the Kuiper belt are known as Centaur ( minor planet ) | centaurs.

While most asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles ( termed " ices "), such as methane, ammonia and water.

The classical ( low-eccentricity ) belt is home to at least three dwarf planets: there are two known larger objects currently outside the Kuiper belt which probably originated in the Kuiper belt.

However, 90482 Orcus, 28978 Ixion and many other Kuiper belt objects are large enough to be in hydrostatic equilibrium ; most of these candidates will probably qualify when more is known about them.

A higher percentage of the larger KBOs possess satellites than the smaller objects in the Kuiper belt, suggesting that a different formation mechanism was responsible.

He used the summer months of his graduate studies to work with planetary scientist Gerard Kuiper ( thesis advisor ), physicist George Gamow, and chemist Melvin Calvin.

They appear to fall into two categories: wide belts, with radii of over 50 AU, and narrow belts ( like our own Kuiper belt ) with radii of between 20 and 30 AU and relatively sharp boundaries.

Short-period comets ( those with orbits of up to 200 years ) are generally accepted to have emerged from the Kuiper belt or scattered disc, two linked flat discs of icy debris beyond Neptune's orbit at 30 AU and jointly extending out beyond 100 AU from the Sun.

While the majority of plutinos have low orbital inclinations, a substantial number of them follow orbits similar to that of Pluto, with inclinations in the 10 – 25 ° range and eccentricities around 0. 2 – 0. 25, resulting in perihelia inside ( or close to ) the orbit of Neptune and aphelia close to the main Kuiper belt's outer edge ( where objects have 1: 2 resonance with Neptune ).

In 2010, in a season described with the slogan " Giants Baseball: Torture " by broadcaster Duane Kuiper, the club won the National League Western Division title for the first time since 2003 after trailing the San Diego Padres most of the season.

* The ( classical ) Kuiper belt contains objects with an average distance to the Sun of 30 to about 55 AU, usually having close-to-circular orbits with a small inclination from the ecliptic.

Studying colours and spectra provides insight into the objects ' origin and a potential correlation with other classes of objects, namely centaurs and some satellites of giant planets ( Triton, Phoebe ), suspected to originate in the Kuiper belt.

Thought to be the point of origin for the majority of short-period comets observed from Earth, it is also home to several large, planet-like bodies including Pluto, which is now recognized as the largest in a population of Kuiper belt objects ( the plutinos ) locked in orbital step with Neptune.

The theorem was originally proved by John Nash with the condition n ≥ m + 2 instead of n ≥ m + 1 and generalized by Nicolaas Kuiper, by a relatively easy trick.

Kuiper finished his doctoral thesis on binary stars with Hertzsprung in 1933, after which he immediately traveled to California to become a fellow under Robert Grant Aitken at the Lick Observatory.

Kuiper was the laboratory's director until his death in 1973 while on vacation with his wife in Mexico.

Fortunately, our solar system is much less populated with large objects today and the probability of such an event happening is essentially zero, as the larger asteroids in the asteroid belt and the giant comets in the Kuiper belt that are in this size range are in stable orbits that will not enter the inner solar system, let alone intersect the orbit of Earth, with no observed exceptions.

Comparison of size of the Kuiper belt ( large faint torus ) with the star VY Canis Majoris ( within Saturn's orbit ), Betelgeuse ( inside Jupiter's orbit ) and R Doradus ( small central red sphere ) together with the orbits of Neptune and Uranus, to scale.

Objects may be perturbed from the Kuiper belt, whereupon they become Neptune-crossing and interact gravitationally with that planet ( see theories of origin ).

The Kuiper belt is a relatively thick torus ( or " doughnut ") of space, extending from about 30 to 50 AU comprising two main populations of Kuiper belt objects ( KBOs ): the classical Kuiper-belt objects ( or " cubewanos "), which lie in orbits untouched by Neptune, and the resonant Kuiper-belt objects ; those which Neptune has locked into a precise orbital ratio such as 3: 2 ( the object goes around twice for every three Neptune orbits ) and 2: 1 ( the object goes around once for every two Neptune orbits ).

The disk is sometimes referred to as " Fomalhaut's Kuiper belt ".

** Classical Kuiper belt objects ( also called cubewanos ) have no such resonance, moving on almost circular orbits, unperturbed by Neptune.

Under the criteria of classifying these Kuiper belt objects ( KBOs ), it became dubious whether Pluto would have been called a planet had it been discovered in the 1990s.

From these, he discovered that the belt is dynamically divided into regions-the Classical Kuiper belt ( circular, uninclined orbits, exemplified by 1992 QB1 ), the Scattered Kuiper Belt ( also called Scattered Disk: large elliptical orbits with perihelion near Neptune, discovered in 1997 ) and the resonant objects ( whose periods are related simply to Neptune's ).

Similarly, Pluto may cross the orbit of Neptune, but Neptune long ago locked Pluto and its attendant Kuiper belt objects, called plutinos, into a 3: 2 resonance, i. e., they orbit the Sun twice for every three Neptune orbits.

Planetesimals that were present in the early formation of the Solar System called oligarchs are much smaller than Uranus and Neptune and so are likely to have been scattered much further out and be roaming the space between the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud.

The innermost portion of the scattered disc overlaps with a torus-shaped region of orbiting objects traditionally called the Kuiper belt, but its outer limits reach much farther away from the Sun and farther above and below the ecliptic than the belt proper.

However, studies of the region since 1992 have revealed that the orbits within what is now called the Kuiper belt are relatively stable, and that these comets originate from the more dynamic scattered disc.

* Edgeworth – Kuiper belt

The Directors of the IHÉS in chronological order: Léon Motchane ( 1958 – 71 ), Nicolaas Kuiper ( 1971 – 85 ), Marcel Berger ( 1985 – 94 ) and Jean-Pierre Bourguignon ( 1994 – present ).

Beyond this, 15 – 20 % of solar-type stars have an observed infrared excess which is believed to indicate massive Kuiper belt-like structures.

* May 1 – Nereid, a moon of Neptune, is discovered by Gerard P. Kuiper.

* February 3 – Hennie Kuiper, Dutch cyclist

* February 16 – Miranda, the innermost moon of Uranus, is discovered by Gerard Kuiper.

* June 4 – The planetoid Quaoar is discovered orbiting the Sun in the Kuiper belt.

In 1949, Kuiper initiated the Yerkes – McDonald asteroid survey ( 1950 – 1952 ).

* 1944 – Gerard Kuiper discovers that the satellite Titan has a substantial atmosphere

* 1949 – Gerard Kuiper discovers Uranus's moon Miranda and Neptune's moon Nereid

* 1951 – Kuiper argues for an annular reservoir of comets between 40-100 astronomical units from the Sun, the Kuiper belt

* 1977 – James Elliot discovers the rings of Uranus during a stellar occultation experiment on the Kuiper Airborne Observatory

* 1988 – Martin Duncan, Thomas Quinn, and Scott Tremaine demonstrate that short-period comets come primarily from the Kuiper Belt and not the Oort cloud

* 1992 – David Jewitt and Jane Luu of the University of Hawaii discover, the first object deemed to be a member of the Kuiper belt

* New Horizons – 19 January 2006 – First Pluto / Charon and Kuiper Belt flyby ( expected arrival 14 July 2015 )