Diagram showing the position of the Oort Cloud. CREDIT: Southwest Research Institute
Posted on 03/17/2012 11:10:14 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
At least 5 percent of the comets orbiting our sun may have been stolen from other stars, scientists say.
Our solar system is thought to include trillions of comets -- small chunks of rock and ice -- that circle the sun in a spherical swarm called the Oort cloud, a region that extendsabout 100,000 times the distance from the Earth to the sun in any direction. The average distance between the Earth and sun is 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).
Now scientists suggest that many of these bodies may actually have originated around other stars and were snatched up by the sun's gravity during a close swipe sometime over the past 4 billion years.
Astronomer Stephen Levine of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., and undergraduate student Catherine Gosmeyer of Indiana University created a computer simulation to calculate how often stars would be likely to exchange comets when they passed close by each other, as stars often do in the course of their lives orbiting the center of the galaxy...
By looking at the number and spread of stars in the sun's neighborhood, the researchers found that other stars would pass reasonably close by the sun every 1 to 2 million years. That means that the sun has probably had between 10,000 to 50,000 close encounters over its lifetime.
And any one of these could easily have caused the sun to gain or lose comets, the simulations suggest. The researchers calculated that at least 5 percent of the Oort cloud comets are likely to be adopted from other stars, though the true figure could be much higher.
And the encounters were probably two-way transactions; just as the sun may have gained new comets, it just as likely lost some of its own.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Diagram showing the position of the Oort Cloud. CREDIT: Southwest Research Institute
There are other things orbiting between the stars like stars,rogue planets,moons and comets.
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...and if there is no Oort Cloud...
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There also could be rouge black holes. These are the real difficult celestial bodies to detect.
How soon before Obama sends out a message using the Aricebo Dish to Apologize for stealing comets from other star systems?
Obama: “The Sun acted stupidly in taking the comets that belonged to the Romulan Star System 1.654 billion years ago....”
My Uncle Art had a Comet. It was black with an automatic transmission. I always wondered where that car went. Thieving sun.....could’ve stole Uncle Bill’s Thunderbird.....that thing was a lemon.
Billions of lawyers from out of the Tort cloud descend on the sun.
Billions of lawyers from out of the Tort cloud descend on the sun.
Good one!
Stealing is such a harsh word, I prefer adopting.
Obama: “The Sun acted stupidly in taking the comets that belonged to the Romulan Star System 1.654 billion years ago....”
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The Romulan war fleeet is on its way, since they never knew who to blame before.
It’s a big dandelion! ;’)
LOL!
That’s a dirty trick, eh?
So where did all the Oxygen necessary to form the rock (presumably SiO2, but maybe other mysterious stuff too?) and ice come from?
ML/NJ
They’re pretty far apart.
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