Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: StarDate
Episode: Centaurs
Description: The realm of the giant outer planets is like a transit station for some smaller bodies. They come from beyond the orbit of Neptune, the solar system’s most remote major planet. And like passengers at a hub airport, their destinations are all over the map.
These objects are called centaurs. Like the half-human, half-horses of myth, they’re hybrids – they look like both asteroids and comets. Most of them are quiet chunks of rock and ice, like asteroids. But some have haloes or tails of gas, like comets.
Centaurs orbit the Sun between Jupiter and Ne...