the.com/kuiper belt
the solar system's junk drawer, except the junk is frozen and older than the sun's memory.
means a vast ring of icy debris and dwarf planets beyond neptune, leftover scraps from planet formation that never got the memo to become a planet.
from predicted by gerard kuiper in 1951 as a source of short-period comets, though he wrongly assumed it had been swept clean by neptune; confirmed empirically only in 1992 with the discovery of object 1992 QB1.
pluto's homepluto is just the belt's most famous resident
comet nurserysource of most short-period comets, like halley's cousins
size20 times wider and far more massive than the asteroid belt
new horizonsvisited arrokoth in 2019, the farthest object ever explored