Kuiper Belt Quotes

If you put Earth out beyond Neptune, you wouldn't be able to call it a planet because it couldn't clear its zone.

Why did we do that to Pluto? We had it good with Pluto.

If you go to planetary science meetings and hear technical talks on Pluto, you will hear experts calling it a planet every day.

Pluto is the new Mars.

The Kuiper Belt is the largest mapped structure in our planetary system, three times as big as all the territory from the sun out to Neptune's orbit.

I actually started my career in planetary science with a master's thesis on Pluto.

It's interesting - Pluto's almost a brand unto itself. It's the farthest. It's the most diminutive of the classical planets. It's been maligned by astronomers. It's always the one with all the question marks in the back of the textbook in the table. I think children identify with it because it's smaller, kind of cute.

Back before the Kuiper Belt was discovered, Pluto did look like a misfit that didn't belong with either the terrestrials or the giant planets.

I tend to think of Pluto and its moons as presents sitting under a Christmas tree. They're wrapped, and from Earth all we can do is look at the boxes to see whether they're light or heavy, to see if something maybe jiggles a bit inside. We're seeing intriguing things, but we really don't know what's in there.

Most of the solar system resides beyond the orbits of the asteroids. There is more to learn there about general planetary processes than on Mars.

I call Pluto the harbinger.

You could not have predicted the amazing discoveries at Pluto, even though we have been to a couple of objects in the solar system that were at least a little analogous to Pluto.

Pluto has a very interesting history, and there is a lot of work that we need to do to understand this very complicated place.

I think that one of the things that will come out of the New Horizons mission is that the public will take a look, and they won't know what else to call Pluto but a planet - and a pretty exciting one.

I loved Pluto. I was totally fascinated by Pluto. When I started in astronomy, I started looking at this region of the sky because I thought it was so interesting out there.

What the hell happened to Pluto?!

We're going to find Marses and maybe Earths out in the solar system's attic of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt.

The Pluto system is much more complex than I had expected.

That so many binary or quasi-binary KBOs exist came as a real surprise to the research community.

Going to the Kuiper Belt is like an archaeological dig into the history of the solar system.

Why can't Pluto be a planet? Some people like Pluto. And if it doesn't exist then they don't have a favorite planet. Right? Please write back but not in cursive because I can't read cursive.

As a planetary scientist, I don't know what else to call Pluto: It's big and round and thousands of miles wide.

One of the implications of the discovery of the Kuiper Belt and its many small planets is that many scientists now think of the solar system as having not two but three zones.

There are lots of really interesting little planets out there in the Kuiper Belt, but Pluto's the only one that's got all the cool attributes.

Pluto and its brethren are the most populous class of planets in our solar system.