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00:03 At the edge of our solar system lies the Kuiper Belt, an area of icy and rocky debris,
00:08 around 30 times the distance of the Earth to the Sun. Back in 2019, NASA's New Horizons probe
00:14 reached the edge of that zone, and now it has uncovered a bit of a surprise. The probe's data
00:19 collection indicates higher than expected dust levels in an area where the belt should be
00:23 thinning, meaning it could be much wider than we thought. The Kuiper Belt is rather poorly
00:27 understood, but this mission will hopefully change that, as it is taking the first direct
00:32 measurements of interplanetary dust far beyond Neptune and Pluto. So what's really out there?
00:36 Well, a whole lot of ice and rocks, and even dwarf planets, but hopefully more,
00:40 which the researchers running the mission say many more surprises and discoveries are expected.
00:46 Previously, astronomers believed that the Kuiper Belt extended out to around 50 astronomical units,
00:51 or around 50 times the distance of the Earth to the Sun. Now they say it could be 80 astronomical
00:56 units, meaning it's considerably thicker, with physicist Alex Donner saying about New Horizons'
01:02 most recent revelation, quote, "The idea that we might have detected an extended Kuiper Belt,
01:06 with a whole new population of objects colliding and producing more dust,
01:10 offers another clue in solving the mysteries of the solar system's most distant regions."
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