Pluto and the Interplanetary Mean Girls
T here is a diffuse and disk-shaped region of our immediate neighborhood filled with trillions of icy bodies, a few approach the size of our moon. The most famous, of course, is the once the ninth planet, Pluto. We have only known about this heavenly realm for a few dozen years and there is so much more to discover... Source: Nasa Space Place T he Kuiper belt is a resting place for comets, but change is everpresent in the universe, and so objects from it occasionally wonder off. Some have fundamentally shaped life here on earth. You see, all of the heavenly bodies around Sol are bound to each other through the wonder of gravity. The icy bodies speak to each other through fundamental forces, and we humans on this tiny rock are left to imagine the outcomes of their conversation. T here is something worthwhile about contemplating ourselves as living on a tiny rock floating in the unknow ether of the cosmos. From our minut...