Chapter 491 Kuiper Belt
In Lin Fan’s view, stars can move freely in space. Asking her to identify the unknown object should be the fastest and best way.
But Zhu Cunjun shook his head, "You don't need to go, it's too dangerous."
After the aircraft landed, the Aerospace Management Center sent several more missions to Xingchen.
Among them are the flight distance test to apogee, and the orbit of the moon around the Orchid Star.
During the boring flight, Lin Fan watched the gray moon gradually getting bigger and rounder, filling her entire field of vision. Then it passed by her and gradually moved away behind her...
Because The mission order only allowed orbit, not landing, so she could only watch helplessly.
To land on the moon, if you tell me about it, you will be able to brag about it for a lifetime!
She felt itchy, and in the end she just stopped thinking about it.
The Space Management Center is also slowly exploring the capabilities of the stars.
Science is never achieved overnight. Even if the stars show obvious advantages, they dare not take too big a step in space without foreign aid.
Bullshit is trivial. If you lose the stars, then the gain outweighs the loss.
So each mission is progressing. If nothing unexpected happens, we should be able to land on the moon next time.
Judging from the current data, the farthest distance that a star can reach is 400,000 kilometers, which is also the distance from Lanxing to the moon. And in the orbit of the earth and the moon, it can move freely and is not affected by other external gravity.
But in the photo, the unknown object is located in the Kuiper Belt outside the orbit of Neptune.
"What is the Kuiper belt?" The new term touched Lin Fan's blind spot again.
Zhu Cunjun calmly opened the content he had searched for and added to his favorites. "It's the asteroid belt. Do you know the eight major planets?"
"Yes." Lin Fan nodded and replied, "I learned about it at the launch center before. According to the distance from the sun, they are Mercury, Venus, and Lan. Stars, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Because the moon revolves around Lanxing, it forms a unique earth-moon system. "
" Yes," Zhu Cunjun looked at her with a smile. "Then you should also know that there is an asteroid belt between the orbit of Mars and the orbit of Jupiter."
"Yes." Lin Fan continued, "Affected by the gravity of the sun and the gravity of Jupiter, There are almost 500,000 asteroids gathered in this area, which is the densest area of asteroids and is also the main belt asteroids. ”
Asteroids are celestial bodies that orbit the sun but are much smaller in size and mass than planets. They are the most numerous celestial bodies in the solar system.
There are generally several theories about the formation of asteroids, among which the theory that "evolved from planetesimals during the formation of the solar system" is the most mainstream.
There are already a lot of them in the asteroid belt, but they are still growing every year.
To put it simply, asteroids are all small celestial bodies in the solar system that are not comets and are orbiting the sun, with diameters within 1 meter to 1000 meters.
Comets, the legendary broom stars, are also stars that revolve around the sun.
Its volume and mass are very small, but its external shape will change differently depending on its distance from the sun.
When it is far away from the sun, it is just a dirty ball of ice and dust.
But once it approaches the sun, under the influence of solar radiation, the material of the comet changes and breaks down into a comet head and a comet tail.
So comets are particularly easy to distinguish. When you look up at the starry sky, there is a celestial body with a tail in the sky that looks like a broom, which is a comet.
Some people may ask again, isn’t that just a meteor?
Of course not.
Meteors refer to meteoroids running in space, that is, when cosmic dust or solid blocks approach the blue star, they are attracted by the gravity of the blue star and enter the blue star. When they pass through the atmosphere at high speed, the light generated by the electronic transition occurs. trace.
Most of the visible meteors are about the size of grains of sand and will burn up before hitting the ground. A small number of meteorites that can survive falling on the ground are called meteorites.
And from the internal structure, the meteoroid contains relatively large amounts of iron, nickel, sulfur, silicon and other minerals that are originally found on the blue star.
So meteorites are generally called meteorites. In ancient times, they were even used to make swords.
The internal materials of comets are mainly water, methane, cyanogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, etc., so under certain conditions, they condense into ice. To sum up.
Comets are sun-orbiting objects whose shape and brightness are affected by their distance from the sun.
Meteors are a light effect produced by friction and combustion of meteoroids after they enter the atmosphere. And because the internal materials are different, the color and shape of the combustion are not fixed.
The book continues with the text.
Seeing Lin Fan talking eloquently, Zhu Cunjun couldn't help but sigh in his heart - young people's brains are easy to use, and he continued to switch web pages with the mouse quietly.
“That’s right,” he admired. “Now that we know the asteroid belt, the Kuiper Belt is easier to understand. It is a dense disk-shaped area of celestial bodies outside the orbit of Neptune and near the ecliptic plane. You can think of it as an enlarged version of the asteroid belt.”
The ecliptic plane refers to the orbital plane of the blue star around the sun.
When the Lanxing orbits, the sphere is tilted to a certain extent. Therefore, the equatorial plane and the ecliptic plane form an angle, and the angle is about 23 degrees.
Although this angle is small, it is not small when extended in the vast space.
The asteroid objects in the Kuiper Belt are basically distributed within this angular area, forming a three-dimensional ring similar to a donut.
According to scientific estimates, the width of the Kuiper Belt is about 20 times that of Jupiter's asteroid belt, and its weight is 20 to 200 times greater.
Just looking at the numbers, you can imagine that there are so many celestial bodies in it that they are countless.
Lin Fan's eyes widened, "Isn't that a dense mass of asteroids?"
"Yes, because it is at the edge of the solar system, so there is a saying that the Kuiper Belt is the solar system. The protective belt, but there is also a saying that the Kuiper Belt is an obstacle to outward exploration.”
"Both statements reflect the barrier function of the Kuiper Belt." Lin Fan quickly reacted, "Is it because there are too many asteroids? It makes it difficult for stars or other objects in the outer solar system to enter the solar system?"
Zhu Cunjun Nodding, "The Kuiper Belt itself has orbital resonance, and Neptune's gravity makes these orbits unstable. Some stars will be sent into the solar system, and some will be dispersed and sent outward, thus forming many unstable objects inside the Kuiper Belt. Stable blank area. "
"And because of different gravity, different orbital areas, different sizes and populations of celestial bodies...the resonance frequencies inside the Kuiper Belt are also different. I don't know the specific principles. I understand, anyway, the final result is that it forms a natural barrier between the inner and outer solar systems."
After all, Zhu Cunjun is not engaged in celestial body research, so it is good to be able to understand this.
“But you said that the unknown object is in the Kuiper Belt?” Lin Fan didn’t understand again, “Since it is a barrier, then...”
"Assuming that it is really a spaceship or something like that, it would not be surprising if it could pass through the Kuiper Belt safely." Zhu Cunjun picked up his tea cup and took a sip of water. "What is difficult for us may not be difficult for other levels of technology." Difficult. Didn’t you say that Nuwa came and left in a spaceship 5,000 years ago?”
That’s right, Lin Fan forgot about this.
The shuttle is still buried underground. Since it can get in, they must have a way.
“Besides, this isn’t the first time.” Zhu Cunjun said earnestly, “A few years ago, Country P discovered an object suspected to be a spacecraft in the Kuiper Belt.”
First of all, I wish all the students who took the college entrance examination today will be able to get into their ideal colleges and universities.
I carefully checked the information for today’s science popularization. I didn’t expect to learn astronomy at this age.
After all, we are going to space later, and we have to have a concept of these stars, right?
There are too many nouns and I’m afraid people won’t understand them, so I explain them in the text. You can’t expect everyone to read a novel and go to Baidu, right?
It would be best if everyone could understand the content of the novel. It would be even better if it could add some additional knowledge.
Haha, this is science fiction. Although only a little bit.
(End of this chapter)