Topic: Neptune

The Supermassive team revisits an interview with Meg Schwamb about the Kuiper Belt and the small bodies beyond Neptune. The conversation explores what these distant objects can reveal about the Solar System’s formation and evolution. This is the explicitly labelled revisited edition published in September 2026.

This lecture tests whether the Nice model can account for the detailed architecture of the Kuiper belt. It contrasts Neptune's behaviour during planetary instability with simpler gradual-migration scenarios. The distribution of distant small bodies provides constraints on the dynamical history of the giant planets.

This lecture connects the properties of the giant planets to their diverse populations of moons and co-orbiting small bodies. It focuses on irregular satellites, whose inclined and elongated orbits suggest capture, and on Trojan objects that move around stable configurations associated with Jupiter or Neptune.

This lecture traces the origins of different comet populations and the processes that send them into the inner Solar System. It compares the scattered Kuiper-belt reservoir with the distant Oort cloud. It also examines the evidence and debate surrounding a possible additional planet beyond Neptune.

The Kuiper belt contains a complex collection of bodies beyond Neptune, including Pluto. This lecture compares dynamically cold and excited populations, resonant objects, scattered bodies and detached remnants. Their orbital structure provides a record of the Solar System's past evolution.