Where Does The Solar System End?

Reference: Found here

In The News:

New "Space Snowman" Discovery Shakes Up Solar System Theories

Recent research indicates that objects in the Kuiper Belt, such as Arrokoth, preserve ancient ices from their formation, challenging existing theories and suggesting a ⁘dormant ice bomb⁘ model for cometary behavior. This image was taken by NASA⁘s New Horizons spacecraft on Jan. 1, 2019 during a flyby of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

A recent study exploring the development of comets suggests that objects in deep space, such as the Kuiper Belt Object 486958 Arrokoth, might act as time capsules, preserving ancient ices from billions of years in the past.

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They make things easier, after all. If we⁘re trying to categorize something, knowing what labeled bin to put it in is handy. If we⁘re looking for trends, then sharp boundaries are even better because they let us compare things in a single category to see how they change.

This tendency, though, can lead to trouble. It can mislead us or cause confusion. Especially when we take something that is fundamentally fuzzy and indistinct and try to ram its square peg into a round hole.

If you picture it in your head, you likely see the sun in the center and a retinue of planets orbiting it. At some point, perhaps around four billion to five billion kilometers out, roughly equivalent to the orbital distance of Neptune, you might draw an imaginary line: everything within that line is inside the solar system, and everything beyond that line is outside it.

You may see where I⁘m going with this. That line you drew in your head is arbitrary and, I dare say, even wrong.

And second, well, setting such outer limits depends on how you define what the solar system is and what⁘s outside it.

This reminded me of something that happened in September 2013, when Voyager 1 was ⁘just⁘ 19 billion kilometers from Earth: NASA announced that the spacecraft had entered interstellar space in August 2012 . At the time, a lot of people talked about how Voyager had finally ⁘left the solar system.⁘