OSSOS XX: The Meaning of Kuiper Belt Colors
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Observations show that 100 km class Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) can be divided into (at least) two color groups, red (R; g − i < 1.2) and very red (VR; g − i > 1.2), reflecting a difference in their surface composition. This is thought to imply that KBOs formed over a relatively wide range of radial distance, r . The cold classicals at 42 au < r < 47 au are predominantly VR, and known Neptune Trojans at r ≃ 30 au are mostly R. Intriguingly, however, the dynamically hot KBOs show a mix of R and VR colors and no correlation of color with r . Here we perform migration/instability simulations where the Kuiper Belt is populated from an extended planetesimal disk. We find that the color observations can be best understood if R objects formed at r < r * and VR objects at r > r *, with 30 au < r * < 40 au. The proposed transition at 30 au < r * < 40 au would explain why the VR objects in the dynamically hot population have smaller orbital inclinations than the R objects, because the orbital excitation from Neptune weakens for orbits starting beyond 30 au. Possible causes of the R–VR color bimodality are discussed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".