Unraveling Cosmic Mysteries: Hubble Telescope Unveils New ‘3-Body Problem’ Puzzle in Kuiper Belt Asteroids (Watch the Video!)

Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope has made an exciting discovery in the distant Kuiper Belt. It seems like a system of asteroids, known as 148780 Altjira, might have three members instead of just two.

This trio of icy objects would be only the second known example of three space rocks held together by gravity in the Kuiper Belt—a region of icy bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit. If verified, this find could reshape how we think about how these objects form.

Team leader Maia Nelsen from Brigham Young University explains that finding such systems helps scientists understand their movement through space. This concept is part of the “three-body problem,” which has puzzled astronomers since Isaac Newton’s time.

The Kuiper Belt itself is fascinating. Discovered in 1992, it contains thousands of icy bodies, with estimates suggesting there could be hundreds of thousands more just waiting to be found. This belt stretches from about 2.8 billion miles from the Sun to around 4.6 billion miles—roughly 50 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. The Altjira system lies about 3.7 billion miles from the Sun.

Initially, Hubble’s images seemed to show only two asteroids in the Altjira system, about 4,700 miles apart. But further observations revealed that what looked like one object was actually two closely orbiting bodies. These icy rocks are so close together that they blended into a single image from Hubble’s distance.

To confirm the presence of a third body, researchers used 17 years of data from Hubble and the Keck Observatory. They found evidence of a unique co-orbital motion which suggested the possibility of a triple system. Nelsen mentioned that other explanations, such as a contact binary—where two rocks touch each other—were also considered, but they focused on the most likely scenario of three distinctly gravitationally bound objects.

This exciting finding adds to the small number of multi-body systems identified in the Kuiper Belt. With just two confirmed to have more than two objects, scientists believe many more exist, waiting to be discovered.

The observations of the Altjira system also provide insight into how Kuiper Belt objects form. The prevailing theory suggests that they were created from the direct gravitational collapse of material surrounding the young Sun, similar to how stars are formed on a smaller scale. This contrasts with the idea that they resulted from collisions between existing larger bodies, which would not result in a three-body arrangement like Altjira appears to have.

The Altjira system is now among the most studied of Kuiper Belt objects, alongside the dwarf planet Pluto and the interesting “space snowman” Arrokoth, which is a binary system made up of two touching rocks. NASA’s New Horizons mission has visited both Pluto and Arrokoth, but there’s no current plan for an Altjira mission. However, future observations using the James Webb Space Telescope are highly anticipated.

In fact, Altjira will soon enter a period of eclipses, where the outer body will pass in front of the central one. This will last for the next decade, giving scientists a unique opportunity to gather more data about this intriguing triple system.

For more details, you can explore the findings published in The Planetary Science Journal.

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