What is the Oort Cloud?

Universe Today ^ | Matt Williams

[BenLurkin]

The Oort Cloud is a theoretical spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that is believed to surround the Sun at a distance of up to around 100,000 AU (2 ly). This places it in interstellar space, beyond the Sun’s Heliosphere where it defines the cosmological boundary between the Solar System and the region of the Sun’s gravitational dominance.

Like the Kuiper Belt and the Scattered Disc, the Oort Cloud is a reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects, though it is over a thousands times more distant from our Sun as these other two. The idea of a cloud of icy infinitesimals was first proposed in 1932 by Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik, who postulated that long-period comets originated in an orbiting cloud at the outermost edge of the Solar System.

...

Based on the analyses of past comets, the vast majority of Oort Cloud objects are composed of icy volatiles – such as water, methane, ethane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, and ammonia. The appearance of asteroids thought to be originating from the Oort Cloud has also prompted theoretical research that suggests that the population consists of 1-2% asteroids.

...

The Oort cloud is thought to be a remnant of the original protoplanetary disc that formed around the Sun approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The most widely accepted hypothesis is that the Oort cloud’s objects initially coalesced much closer to the Sun as part of the same process that formed the planets and minor planets, but that gravitational interaction with young gas giants such as Jupiter ejected them into extremely long elliptic or parabolic orbits.

Recent research by NASA suggests that a large number of Oort cloud objects are the product of an exchange of materials between the Sun and its sibling stars as they formed and drifted apart.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

In plain English, this region is full of space crap.

[MisterArtery]

Sounds like something lurking over Minnesooooooooota.

[right way right]

My favorite thing about the Oort cloud is that it has nothing to do with Trump or Kelly.
That is ultra fantastically coool!!!

[BenLurkin]

Dude, the cloud part is okay — it was the “butt” that is confusing.

[terycarl]

why is this important to anyone except space explorers??

[adorno]

why is this important to anyone except space explorers??

We on this planet are space explorers, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not.

We are riding on this huge space station known as Earth, being led on our way through space by our star, the Sun. We are riding around the Milky Way galaxy, in an orbit we have no control over. Our Galaxy is in constant movement away from where it started from. We will never be in the same place again, since, our whole planetary system is being dragged along an orbit around a galaxy, and which galaxy is taking us all to places unknown. We are going to new places each and every second of our lives, and eventually, in millions or billions of years, we might have a chance to get off this planet and this star and this galaxy, in some more strange part of the universe.