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“ Evidence he and others have gathered over the past decade suggests something strange is happening in the outer solar system: distant subplanetary objects are being found on orbits that look sculpted, arranged by an unseen gravitational force.”

Does anyone know what they mean by “sculpted orbits”?



It seems to just be a poetic way of saying orbits that are affected by, or only possible because of, another object.


The solar system is mostly a flat spinning disk with everything spinning roughly in the same direction, roughly in a plane.

When you find objects in orbits going the opposite direction or not orbiting in the plane or spinning in the wrong direction you want to look for some explanation of why.


I think it means the orbits are distributed in a way that suggests they gravitationally altered, either missing in certain orbits, or more than expected in others.




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