Speaker 1: So picture this right, You've got this NASA space probe
way out in the boonies of the Solar System, right
cruising along, and then bam, everything.
Speaker 2: Goes silent, like hitting a cosmic brick wall.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. But what could have that kind of power
out there in the deep dark, Like, what kind of
cosmic entity or just crazy phenomenon has the juice to
just shut down a whole NASA mission. I mean that's
a question, right, that's got to be the question.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it grabs you that whole idea of like
the non bumping into the unknown, especially out there in
the outer Solar System where things are already so mysterious.
You think about that spacecraft running into something so weird
just goes cut put. I mean, that's pure imagination fuel
right there.
Speaker 1: And we're talking full tank of imagination fuel on this
deep dive, folks. We're heading straight for the Kuiper Belt,
that massive zone of icy stuff way past Neptune. We're
going to dig into some fascinating science from missions like
New Horizons, and you know, we'll also toss in some
let's just call them alternative views about what might be
going on way there right on the edge exactly, And
like always, we're all about navigating this icy wilderness together.
We're going to separate the solid science from the more
speculative stuff, the intriguing stuff. By the end you'll have
a way better grasp of the mystery swirling around this
distant frontier and what they might tell us about our
place in the cosmos. So you're ready to trek out
to the twilight zone of our Solar system.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the Kuiper Belt, even without all the weird stuff,
is already a remarkable place, like it holds clues to
how our Solar system formed, and it's a frontier where
we're still figuring things out constantly.
Speaker 1: So let's get our bearings. What exactly is this Kuiper
Belt we keep talking about. Paint a picture for us.
It's location, how big it is? All that?
Speaker 2: Okay, So picture the Solar system right Sun in the middle,
Planet's orbiting around now, zoom way past Neptune, something like
two point eight billion miles out. That's where the Kiper
Belt starts. It's not like Saturn's rings, all nice and thin.
It's more like this huge doughnut shaped region stretching outward
for another four point five billion miles. To really get
how massive it is, think about this, the distance from
the Sun to Earth. That's one astronomical unit or AU.
The Kuiper belt goes from about thirty AU to fifty
five AU. It's colossal, like, way bigger than the inner
Solar System we know.
Speaker 1: So it dwarfs the familiar totally.
Speaker 2: Think about it like leaving your neighborhood and ending up
on another continent. That's the kind of leap and scale
we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, that's mind blowing. It makes our little corner
of the Solar System feel pretty small. So how did
we even realize this giant icy doughnut was out there?
Who tipped us off?
Speaker 2: Well, it starts back in nineteen forty three with this
Irish astronomer Kenneth Edgeworth. He's the one who first suggested
there might be a bunch of icy bodies hanging out
past Neptune, the source for those short period comments we see.
Then in nineteen fifty one, Gerard Kuyper, a major thunder
and planetary science, really fleshed out the idea. He proposed
a whole belt of leftover stuff from the Solar system's
berth way out beyond Neptune, so he's the namesake right on.
But get this, we didn't actually see the Kuiper Belt
for decades. It wasn't until nineteen ninety two that Distro
Remembers David Jewett and his grad student Jane lou finally
spotted Kuiper built objects or KBOs for the first time.
They named it after Kuiper, which is fitting.
Speaker 1: It shows you how sometimes these theoretical ideas can take
ages to be confirmed by actually seeing them.
Speaker 2: It's proof that sometimes you gotta trust the math.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So what's all this cosmic junk floating around in this
giant doughnut? Is it just frozen water and rocks? That's
the basic recipe. Yeah, but it's surprisingly diverse. We've got comets,
dwarf planets like Pluto. You know, Pluto's a KBO and
one of the biggest dwarf planets we know. And then
there are asteroids and all sorts of other icy bodies
of different sizes and makeups. It's basically a cosmic junkyard
filled with leftovers from when the Solar System formed, the
building blocks that never quite got together to make bigger planets.
Speaker 1: Like the spare parts bin of the Solar System.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, yeah, something like that. Yeah, And the really
important thing to remember is this is still a largely
unexplored region. We're finding new things all the time and
constantly refinding what we know about the Kuiper Belt. Just
recently they found new KBOs with really weird orbits, throwing
a wrench into our models of the outer Solar System.
Speaker 1: It's like a cosmic game of hide and seek out there.
Speaker 2: And we're just getting started.
Speaker 1: A true frontier, which leads us to the good stuff,
the anomalous Kuiper Belt objects you mentioned. Some of these
icy guys aren't exactly following the rules. What kind of
cosmic curve balls are they throwing at us?
Speaker 2: Well, most of the KBOs we've seen seem to behave predictably,
they follow paths and show characteristics that line up with
our understanding of physics and how things move in space.
But then you have these outliers, these odd balls that
do things that make scientists scratch their heads and go
back to the drawing board. Take, for example, an object
they spotted back in nineteen ninety four by Michael Irwin
and Nigieto.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the one with the cool name Typhon. What
made it so special it's spin.
Speaker 2: It was spinning crazy fast. Yeah, they saw it getting
brighter and dimmer in regular pattern, completing a full rotation
every five point five hours. Now, way out in the
Kuiper Belt, where it's cold and dark, things tend to
move pretty slowly, So for an od that size to
be spinning that fast, it's just bizarre. In fact, based
on what we know about how these icy bodies hold together,
mostly through wheak gravity, something like Typhon spinning that fast
should rip itself apart. It'd be like watching a loosely
packed snowball spin so fast it defies gravity and doesn't explode.
Speaker 1: That's a serious head scratcher, it really.
Speaker 2: Is, because our models of how these icy objects form
suggest they should be pretty loosely bound. For something that
size to spin that fast without disintegrating, it means it's
either way denser than we thought, or there's some internal
force holding it together something we don't understand yet.
Speaker 1: A cosmic spinning top that breaks the rules.
Speaker 2: That's definitely weird.
Speaker 1: And this was all before the New Horizons mission gave
us a closer look at the Kuiper Belt, right, So,
jump ahead the twenty sixteen New Horizons has done its
amazing flyby of Pluto and it's on its way to
another Kuiper Belt object. What was the name of that
KBO it was going for?
Speaker 2: The one found in ninety four was nineteen ninety four
ES two, nicknamed Typhon. Now, when it comes to New Horizons,
it did observe a lot of KBOs. But the story
you might be thinking of often involves this hypothetical situation
around April twenty sixteen, where the spacecraft was supposedly heading
toward a different object that was also spinning super fast.
In some stories, this object is called Adon. It's important
to separate this hypothetical close encounter from what New Horizons
actually saw and documented during its extended mission.
Speaker 1: Right Umumua was that first interstellar object we ever saw
passing through our Solar System, and a lot of tension
because it was so strange. But the specific fast spinning
KBO that some accounts say New Horizons was approaching for
a close flyby around that time is sometimes referred to
as Addon. So in this story, New Horizons is getting
ready for this close encounter with odd On, and then
things get a little dramatic.
Speaker 2: Right, That's how some of the stories tell it. The
idea is that as new horizons got close to add On,
all communication with the spacecraft just stopped. A CPU safing
event happened, which is basically a safety feature that puts
the spacecraft into a low power mode to protect itself
if something goes wrong.
Speaker 1: Like a cosmic circuit breaker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And these safing events can happen for all
sorts of reasons out in deep space, radiation, spike, software, glitches,
you name it. But one particular story suggests that a
NASA engineer thought it might be something more deliberate, like
signal jamming. The idea being that something out there was
actively blocking our communication with a spacecraft, stopping us from
getting a good look at add On.
Speaker 1: Signal jamming. That sounds more like a spy movie than
a space mission. What would be the point of someone
or something blocking our view of a Kuiper Belt object.
Speaker 2: That's where things get really speculative. We already talked about
how weird it is that some KBOs like Typhon spin
so fast that five point five hour rotation has been
a mystery for decades, And like you mentioned, some people
have even suggested that maybe it's some form of artificial gravity,
like what NASA has been researching for space habitats. The
idea is that if you spin a cylindrical structure, you
can create a force that mimics gravity along the inside.
Speaker 1: Artificial gravity. That's classic sci fi. But how close are
we to actually making that a reality for space travel.
Speaker 2: The basic physics works, but actually making it work for
humans in space has been tough. There's been a ton
of research showing that when people are exposed to the
forces created inside a spinning environment, it can cause all
sorts of problems, nausee, disorientation, even long term health issues.
Speaker 1: So basically, our bodies don't like being spun around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. The point some of these stories are
making is that if Adon is spinning that fast and
somehow creating its own internal gravity, it might point to
a level of technology or a natural process that we
just don't get yet.
Speaker 1: So we've got this strange spinning object, maybe hinting at
some unknown tech or physics, and then our spacecraft goes
silent as it gets close. It's a recipe for some
pretty out there theories, and the Kuiper Belt itself you
said it's a good place to hide. Why is that?
Speaker 2: Think about how massive it is, trillions of cubic miles
of space lit by this faint distant sun. Finding small
dark object there is like finding a needle in a haystack. Plus,
the Kuiper Belt is packed with icy bodies. It's like
a cosmic minefield. Spotting one unusual object and all that
is almost impossible. It's like trying to find a specific
grain of sand on a beach at night. The distance
and all those other objects create the perfect camouflage for
anything that wants to stay hidden.
Speaker 1: Like a cosmic game of hide and seek on a
grand scale. So what happened to New Horizons after it
when silent? Did it just magically come back online?
Speaker 2: That's what the story says. After some time being quiet,
the spacecraft supposedly started talking to us again and continued
on its mission. The reason for the silence in this
version of events was never really figured out. And these
accounts also say that New Horizons saw other Kuiper Belt
objects acting strangely during its journey, as if something out
there was messing with them.
Speaker 1: Other KBOs acting up. What kind of strange stuff are
we talking about? More crazy spinning or something else entirely.
Speaker 2: The details in these stories are usually pretty vague, but
the general idea is that these objects were moving or
doing things that didn't make sense according to normal science.
It's like the Kuiper Belt, is this place where the
unexpected is more common than we realize.
Speaker 1: It's like the wild West of the Solar System. But
of course we need to address the official side of things.
What does NASA say about communication problems with New Horizons
around that time and this whole total control blackout idea
that's been floating around online.
Speaker 2: Officially, NASA considers the New Horizon's mission a huge success.
They do admit there was a short communication blip back
in July twenty fifteen, about ten days before the Pluto
fly by, but as a known issue, something about a
memory overload, and it only lasted for about an hour.
NASA is adamant that this had nothing to do with
any encounters with fast spinning KBOs in April twenty sixteen.
Their records don't show any long communication blackout or signs
of interference during that time. They also point out that
this dramatic total control blackout story seems to come from
a specific unofficial source online.
Speaker 1: It's a good reminder that not everything you read online
is true, so especially when it comes to complex science stuff.
But even with that in mind, the Kuper Belt does
seem to have some real scientific mysteries that are keeping
researchers busy, and that brings us to some of the
more mainstream theories, like the idea of a hidden planet
sometimes called planet X or planet nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The idea of a large, undiscovered planet lurking
in the Outer Solar System has been around for a while.
It's often used to explain why some of the objects
out past Neptune has such weird orbits. One specific theory
suggests that our sun might have a binary companion, a
brown dwarf, hanging out way out in the Kuiper Belt.
Brown dwarfs are like failed stars. They're bigger than planets,
but not big enough to start burning like a real star,
so they don't give off much light, which would make
them super hard to see in the darkness of the
Outer Solar System.
Speaker 1: A massive invisible object shaping the Outer Solar System. What
kind of effects could something like that have?
Speaker 2: A brown dwarf, or even a big planet like this
planet nine would have a huge gravitational pull on the
outer planet that's and everything else in the Guiper Belt.
That poll could explain why some KBOs have those strange,
clustered orbits that don't quite fit with our current models
of the Solar System. It's like an invisible hand guiding
the movements of everything out there. And like you said,
NASA and other astronomers have been actively searching for planet
nine because finding it would solve a lot of these
gravitational puzzles.
Speaker 1: So Planet X could be the reason behind some of
the Kuiper Belt's weirdness.
Speaker 2: It's a leading theory that could explain some of the
orbital anomalies we see, but it's important to remember that
it doesn't necessarily explain everything, like those fast spinning objects
or the alleged new horizons blackout. And then there are
those individual objects out there that are just plain strange,
like KBO two thousand and eight kV forty two, nicknamed Dracula.
Speaker 1: Dracula, that's a pretty intense name for a chunk of ice.
What makes it so blood thirsty.
Speaker 2: It's not about what it's made of, it's how it moves.
Pretty much everything in our Solar system planets, asteroids you
name it, orbits the Sun in the same direction. That's
called prograde motion, and they all pretty much stay in
the same flat plane called the plane of the eclipse.
Think of it like cars on a racetrack, all going
the same way. But Dracula breaks all the rules. It
has a retrograde orbit, meaning it goes in the opposite
direction to almost everything else, and its orbit is tilted
at a crazy angle, almost perpendicular to that flat plane.
It's like seeing a car going the wrong way in
a busy highway.
Speaker 1: Definitely a rebel. How big is this rogue icy body.
Speaker 2: Estimates put it at about thirty meters across, so not tiny.
If it hit Earth, it would cause some serious damage,
kind of like the Tunguska event Luckily, its orbit keeps
it far away from us, so we don't have to
worry about that. But the fact that it exists and
has such a weird orbit is a problem for our
models of how the Solar system formed. It's hard to
explain how it ended up in that backward tilted orbit
through the normal processes.
Speaker 1: Like it came from somewhere else entirely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a real mystery.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the Kuiper Belt is full of surprises,
spinning weirdos, orbital rebels, you name it. We've covered some
of the scientific mysteries and the theories trying to explain them.
But as we hinted at earlier, there's another side to
this discussion, the world of controlled information and whistleblower accounts.
This is where our deep dive takes a turn into
some pretty unconventional territory.
Speaker 2: Definitely, some narratives surrounding space exploration claim that official organizations
like NASA are messing with images or hiding information from
the public. The reasons for this alleged cover up often
involve theories about hiding evidence of unusual objects, alien life,
or other big discoveries that could change everything. Plus, the
Internet is full of clickbait headlines announcing amazing space discoveries
that often turn out to be nothing. This creates a
sense of mistrust and fuel speculation about hidden truths. It's
a confusing information landscape out there.
Speaker 1: It's like a constant stream of tantalizing hints but no
real evidence. It's easy to see why people get suspicious
and look for alternative explanations. And then we have the
really extraordinary claims like the story of Rebecca Rose and
a twenty and back secret space program. This is where
things get really strange.
Speaker 2: Yeah of people clowning to have been abducted as kids,
given psychic training, and then set on twenty year missions
in a secret space program, often involving advanced tech and aliens,
is a common theme in certain circles. The idea of
a dar fleet operating in the shadows is a big
part of these alleged programs.
Speaker 1: So let's break down some of the main points of
Rebecca Rose's story. From a young age, she talks about
being abducted repeatedly and undergoing intense psychic training on a
base on the Moon. During these experiences, she claims to
have met various extraterrestrials, including the Grays and the Mantids.
This training apparently involved developing telepathy to communicate with other
abductees and even having her DNA taken. Then, at nine
years old, she was supposedly recruited into this dark.
Speaker 2: Fleet, and according to her, this recruitment involved trauma based
mind control at a facility under Great Lakes Naval Station.
After that, she says she traveled to different places using jumpgates,
basically instant transportation portals. Her supposed missions included serving in
a Mars defense force, where she flew modified helicopters to
protect a human base from native Martian life forms, which
she describes as mantids and reptilians. She also claims to
have been given cybernetic enhancements that made her stronger and smarter,
basically turning her into a super soldier.
Speaker 1: It gets even wilder when she describes being essentially sold
to a reptilian species called the Draconians, who she portrays
as the rulers of Planet X, which is located beyond
the Kuiper Belt. She says the Draconians are an ancient,
technologically advanced race with strong psychic powers and a society
based on fear and control. Her job apparently involved being
a patrol pilot protecting a Draconian ship orbiting Planet X.
During this time, she claims she was forced to do
some pretty bad things, like killing harmless creatures. After her
supposed twenty year tour of duty, she says she was
aid to regress her consciousness, sent back to her nine
year old body with her memory suppressed, and these memories
only came back to her later in life.
Speaker 2: It's an incredibly detailed and complex story with elements from
science fiction and various conspiracy theories. When you hear claims
like this, it's important to think about where they come
from and if there's any way to check if they're true.
This twenty and back narrative is often linked to Corey Good,
who started telling a similar story around twenty ten, also
claiming he was recruited as a kid into a secret
space program and then age regressed after twenty years. But
Good himself has said that parts of his story might
be dreams or delusions. He's also been in legal fights
over who owns the rights to the twenty and back idea.
Speaker 1: So the guy who made this twenty and backstory famous
has doubts about it himself and even tried to claim
ownership of it. That definitely raises some red flags.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. And what's interesting is that the core
ideas in this twenty and backstory, like kids being recruited
into secret programs, psychic training, age regression, and encounters with
reptilians actually existed before Goods started talking about them. You
can find similar elements in Michael Relt's The Mars Records books,
which came out in two thousand. Those people like al
Buelick have also talked about age regression and being sent
back in time, and their stories are even older. And
like you mentioned earlier, Bill Cooper talked about a secret
Navy space program way back in nineteen ninety two. This
suggests that these ideas have been around in certain groups
for a while, with each new story adding its own unique,
often sci fi inspired details.
Speaker 1: It sounds more like an evolving story than a real
historical event. And our source material is pretty clear about
these twenty and back claims, saying they're probably not true
and almost definitely not true. That's a pretty strong statement
it is.
Speaker 2: There's no real evidence to support these stories, and they're
full of inconsistencies and fantastical elements, so being skeptical is understandable.
But the fact that these stories exist and continue to
be popular shows how fascinated people are with the unknown
and how much distrust there is towards official explanations about
space and government secrecy. This specific idea of the Draconian's
controlling access beyond the Kuiper Belt plays into that fear
that maybe were being kept from exploring the cosmos by
some powerful hidden force.
Speaker 1: It's a cool idea, but probably not very realistic. But
let's get back to something more tangible. What about the
future of our actual scientific exploration of the Kuiper Belt.
Could there be valuable resources out there or could it
be a stepping stone for deeper space travel?
Speaker 2: Definitely, the Kuiper Belt is thought to have tons of
icy stuff like water, ice, and frozen gases, which could
be turned into water, rocket fuel, and other things we
need for long space missions going further out into the
Solar System or even beyond. It could be like a
cosmic gas station and supply depot for future interstellar travel. Plus,
studying these ancient icy bodies can tell us a lot
about the early Solar System and how planets formed, So.
Speaker 1: Even with all the mysteries and wild stories, there is
a real scientific reason to keep exploring this distant region.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and some researchers think that the Kuiper Belt might
be more active than we realize, and that this activity
could have subtle effects on the whole Solar System, maybe
even influencing things here on Earth in ways we don't
fully understand. The best way to figure all this out
is to send more spacecraft out there for long term exploration.
But of course, like some of those more imaginative stories,
suggests whether hypothetical beings like the Draconians would let us
do that as a whole other.
Speaker 1: Question, that's a pretty wild thought. So as we wrap
up our deep dive into the Kuiper Belt, it's clear
that this place is way more than just a bunch
of leftover ice. We've encountered real scientific puzzles like those
crazy spinning KBOs and the rebellious orbit of Dracula. And
while the stories about secret space programs and alien power
struggles are intriguing, they're probably not true. But hopefully you,
our listener, now have a better understanding of both the
science and the stories surrounding this final frontier of our
Solar system.
Speaker 2: The Kuiper Belt is a powerful reminder of just how
much we still don't know about our cosmic neighborhood, and
how much there is left to discover. It's a place
where our scientific knowledge is constantly being challenged and where
we're likely to find more surprises.
Speaker 1: So here's a final thought to chew on as we
finish our journey to the icy edge of our Solar system.
Given the mind boggling size of the universe and the
limits of our current technology, what else could be out
there lurking beyond our ability to see it. Could there
be things, phenomena, or even forms of life hiding in
the outer reaches of our solar system that we haven't
even imagined yet. It makes you think about that line
between real science and our human desire to fill the
unknown with possibilities, no matter how wild they might seem.
Speaker 2: The Kuiper Belt is a perfect example of that. It's
a place where science and imagination collide.
Speaker 1: And who knows what we'll find out there next. Thanks
for joining us on this deep dive. Folks. Until next time,
keep looking up and keep wondering.