The Kuiper Belt (Not the Belt You're Thinking of)

THE KUIPER BELT (NOT THE BELT YOU'RE THINKING OF)

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The Kuiper belt is a large ring of ice and rocks on the edge of our solar system. It is the home to many famous astronomical objects including Pluto, it's moon and hundreds of dwarf planets. I personally feel that the Kuiper belt is often forgotten due to it's smaller brother, the asteroid belt, whom its greatly larger than. Due to its size and contents many of the dwarf planets in our solar system originated in the Kuiper belt. Unfortunately, these planets are either to small or to irregular to actually be called true planets. Some Kuiper belt astronomical bodies could have been large enough to be called true planets, but the constant barrage of large hostile bodies (the size of pluto) hit them destroying large layers of their surface. According to current planetary definitions based on size and the clearness of the orbit, these dwarf planets do not count as the real thing. -- The Brain