It has taken two years to confirm the existence of 2014 UZ224, one of the furthest objects from Earth in the Solar System on record. A team of researchers, coordinated by Professor David Gerdes, from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Michigan, in the US, has managed to determine the position of this body, located in the Kuiper belt, at about 13.8 billion kilometers from the Sun. Gerdes and his collaborators, who are working on an international project trying to measure the expansion of the universe, discovered it using an instrument called the Dark Energy Camera, which is actually used to observe the motion of galaxies.
However, they have managed to find out that 2014 UZ224 completes an orbit around the star king in 1,100 years and is barely 530 kilometers long. That is, it is more than twice as far from the Sun as Pluto and is about four times smaller than it .
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has confirmed the existence of this microworld that could become the sixth dwarf planet found in the Solar System . Experts believe that there may be at least another hundred of which we still do not have news. For now, and if the UAI so agrees – it is not clear that 2014 UZ224 is large enough to be considered a dwarf planet – it could join the other known bodies of this type: Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Makemake and Haumea. In fact, in February 2016 the discovery of another candidate was announced: the 2015 RR245 trans-Neptunian object, also located in the Kuiper belt.
Image: NASA / ESA / Adolf Schaller
