A new telescope quickly spots 2,100 asteroids

The Vera C Rubin Observatory may uncover millions more —even planet No. 9

- KENNETH CHANG

MORE THAN A million asteroids, some of them potential threats to Earth. Asteroids with tails like comets. Interstellar objects that happen to be swinging by our sun. (Could they be alien spaceships?) More distant worlds including, perhaps, a ninth planet, which could fill in the story of our solar system's turbulent youth.

Those are some of the discoveries that the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile is expected to make in the cosmic neighborhood that is our solar system. (Maybe not the alien spaceships.)

"I think that we're going to completely transform our view of the solar system and rewrite that textbook over the next few years," said Meg Schwamb, a planetary scientist at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland.

Saving the planet while stargazing Rubin's scans of the night sky will also help make Earth a safer place, spotting potentially dangerous asteroids that have so far eluded detection.