Dr. Katherine Volk

So known objects, we are always on the lookout

for when we know an object is going to go in front of a star, because then we can actually directly measure its size by timing how long it blocks out the star.

There are also some surveys, which I should have mentioned, trying to count the number of tiny, like one kilometer Kuiper Belt objects.

Now, we will never directly observe a one kilometer Kuiper belt object.

They're too faint for reflected light to be a reasonable detection mechanism.

But what you can do is you can stare at a patch of stars and hope that one happens to occult a star.

And you can count how often that happens.

You don't learn anything about the object other than its distance and its size.

You'll never know its orbit.

But you can still figure out that it's part of the Kuiper belt.

There have been no...

100% accepted occultations of tiny hyperveiled objects.

There's been a couple reported ones that are highly questioned.

Again, that would be a source of heated debate in the community.

There's a Taos survey going on.

They're building telescopes in Hawaii right now.

They did a preliminary survey, stared at stars for a very long time, didn't see any occultations.

They placed some upper limits on how many one-kilometer objects there are.

But they're going to be up and running in a year or two, I think.

And within five years or something, they should actually observe an event.