Posted on 06/28/2021 9:32:21 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Astronomers have never directly seen the Oort Cloud and the most distant spacecraft ever launched by humankind – Voyager 1 – is not due to get there for another 300 years. But new research and upcoming space missions are now starting to reveal some of its secrets.
The Oort Cloud was first predicted by Jan Oort in 1950 to explain the existence of comets like Neowise. Unlike short-period comets, which usually take less than 200 years to orbit the Sun and come from an icy disk beyond Neptune called the Kuiper Belt, the origin of those with much longer orbits was more difficult to explain. Most long-period comets take between 200 and 1,000 years to complete one orbit of the Sun. They also have eccentric orbits, coming very close to the Sun and then extremely far away again.
Oort theorised that these comets could be coming from a shell of distant objects, made mostly of rock and ice, far outside the reaches of our solar system. This enormous shell of objects is thought to start somewhere around 190 billion miles (306 billion km) to 470 billion miles (756 billion km) from the Sun.
The idea our Sun might have stolen material from elsewhere was first put forward about a decade ago. "In the Sun's birth cluster of stars, the sibling stars would have been snuggled up tight enough for their comet clouds to overlap and tangle," says Michele Bannister, planetary astronomer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. "Then they parted ways as the cluster dispersed." Just as the Oort Cloud might contain comets from other stars, some of our own comets may now be orbiting other stars in return.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
I wouldn't doubt it. I only stopped at the level of "our Universe" because that's the only one I'm aware of in practice. What we call "the universe" is the "stuff inside the Void closer than ~13 billion light-years". But by its very definition, the Void is infinite, so it could indeed hold many such universes, even an infinite number. That, of course, we would never be able to sense in our lifetimes. But it's on my short list of questions, should I get the opportunity to ask God about it.
> Something out there is spitting out universes like spores from a fungi. :)
Fungi *ping*
Deut. 29:29:
The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Puffballs hold the record for producing more potential life than any other living thing on earth. A single average-sized puffball can produce as many as seven trillion spores.
Yes, indeed.
> A single average-sized puffball can produce as many as seven trillion spores.
WOW! In college in the early 70's I worked as a technician in an agricultural research facility, doing mushroom genetic studies. Fascinating work, mostly with bisporus and campestris, and I gained an appreciation for the huge number of spores in a single cap. But a puffball -- I can believe trillions, although I never thought about it until you mentioned it. Thanks!
I share your interest in that theory, and include microscopic life that survived the supernova frozen in planetary oceans blasted into space...And that early life forms frozen in comets seeded Earth’s oceans and eventually became us...
When this sort of speculation starts, I’m always reminded of this movie scene...
https://www.reddit.com/r/trees/comments/4ftyqv/animal_house_weed_smoking_scene/
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