Gerard Kuiper, one of the first to suggest the existence of the Kuiper Belt, is born
On this day, in 1905, Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper was born. In 1951, Kuiper suggested the existence, in the early history of the Solar System, of a region beyond the orbit of Neptune consisting of many small bodies. However, he didn't believe this disc of planetesimals had survived through the history of the Solar System. Nearly a decade before, Kenneth Edgeworth had presented a similar idea, but believed that this disc still exists. Its existence is today confirmed and it is named Edgeworth–Kuiper belt.
"Those wild hills are surely the outpost of a frightful cosmic race — as I doubt all the less since reading that a new ninth planet has been glimpsed beyond Neptune, just as those influences had said it would be glimpsed.
Astronomers, with a hideous appropriateness they little suspect, have named this thing “Pluto”.
