UVic researchers use tiny icy bodies to study planet formation<\/p>\n
Published 12:30 pm Thursday, September 10, 2026<\/p>\n
A collection of small, icy bodies orbiting beyond Neptune is giving University of Victoria researchers new clues about how the planets in our solar system formed.<\/p>\n
Two new studies, published in The Astronomical Journal, examined trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) \u2014 small bodies that orbit the Sun beyond Neptune.<\/p>\n
The objects are leftovers from the early days of the solar system and have changed little since they formed, which makes them useful to scientists studying how the planets came together.<\/p>\n
The research was led by UVic PhD student Marielle Eduardo and Wesley Fraser, an adjunct professor at UVic, along with international collaborators.<\/p>\n
One study looked at the sizes of TNOs and found that different groups of objects have surprisingly similar size patterns, even though they formed in different parts of the solar system.<\/p>\n
The finding suggests that where these objects formed may not have had as much of an effect on their final size as scientists expected.<\/p>\n
Researchers also looked at the colour of the objects, which can provide clues about what their surfaces are made of.<\/p>\n
Most TNOs are reddish, with some among the reddest objects found anywhere in the solar system. The studies found that large TNOs and much smaller ones have similar colours, suggesting their surface materials have remained relatively unchanged over time.<\/p>\n
That is surprising because smaller objects are more likely to have been affected by collisions with other bodies.<\/p>\n
The researchers were able to study objects as small as 10 kilometres across by combining observations from the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.<\/p>\n
Eduardo and Fraser are now planning a larger project using James Webb that could allow them to find objects as small as one kilometre across.<\/p>\n
Studying these even smaller objects could give researchers more clues about how the building blocks of planets formed in the early solar system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UVic researchers use tiny icy bodies to study planet formation Published 12:30 pm Thursday, September 10, 2026 A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-891002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}