A ROGUE star may have ploughed through our solar system in the distant past. It would have shaken up the outer reaches and could explain the peculiar properties of the icy bodies which orbit in the Kuiper belt.
These balls of ice, up to a few thousand kilometres across, inhabit the region between Uranus and Neptune. Most of the planets orbit in the same plane, that of the proto-planetary disc from which they were formed. But many Kuiper belt objects, including Pluto, travel in “high-inclination” orbits, at a sharp angle to the plane of the planets.
Alice Quillen and Eric…
