Cold and Hot Populations: Physical Characteristics
In addition to the distinct orbital characteristics the two populations display different physical characteristics.
The difference in colour between the red cold population and more heterogeneous hot population was observed as early as in 2002. Recent studies, based on a larger data set, indicate the cut-off inclination of 12° (instead of 5°) between the cold and hot populations while confirming the distinction between the homogenous red cold population and the bluish hot population.
Another difference between the low-inclination (cold) and high-inclination (hot) classical objects is the observed number of binary objects. Binaries are quite common on low-inclination orbits and are typically similar-brightness systems. Binaries are less common on high-inclination orbits and their components typically differ in brightness. This correlation, together with the differences in colour, support further the suggestion that the currently observed classical objects belong to at least two different overlapping populations, with different physical properties and orbital history.
Read more about this topic: Classical Kuiper Belt Object
Famous quotes containing the words cold and, cold, hot and/or physical:
“Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“A man’s social and spiritual discipline must answer to his corporeal. He must lean on a friend who has a hard breast, as he would lie on a hard bed. He must drink cold water for his only beverage. So he must not hear sweetened and colored words, but pure and refreshing truths. He must daily bathe in truth cold as spring water, not warmed by the sympathy of friends.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What a hot theopathy
Roisters through her, gnaws the walls....”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“To many women marriage is only this. It is merely a physical change impinging on their ordinary nature, leaving their mentality untouched, their self-possession intact. They are not burnt by even the red fire of physical passion—far less by the white fire of love.”
—Mary Webb (1881–1927)