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 ...
Nanoo nanoo.
And then I Thank God for the magnificent wonders of His Creation, our Universe.
And then I get another cup of coffee.
The icy cloud is melting due to global warming....
We need to be taxed more to send out more space probes to figure out way to stop this.
I am with you on wrapping the mind around the vast distances in space, and the awe of it all as G-d’s creation. Yes, it does boggle the mind and helps make us feel so humble, that tiny us on our little spec are witnesses to it all.
I am Vger..... you are not the creator.
Icy cloud? Why icy, after all it’s only about 400 degrees below zero.
Capture the Oort cloud and bring it to the surface to solve globull warming. Planetary A/C!
Yeah, he’s ‘mort’ alrighty...................
I see what you did there...
Our whole universe could possibly be a molecule in a drop of water that is now part of a cup of coffee that somewhere is being drank...And with that, there could be a molecule in that cup of coffee that you are drinking that is another universe such as ours that contains a galaxy that has a solar system just like ours with a planet where another person is drinking a cup of coffee that..........
And because things tend to repeat in cycle and protocols as you point out. I would venture to say that there are more than one universe. I think there may be as many as there are Galaxies. We tend to hold ourselves to a limited perspective.
Does God have the power to create many more than just one? Is it infinite rather than finite? I think so, and I think to limit the true scope of his ability as finite is a mistake. Something out there is spitting out universes like spores from a fungi. :)
Many many more... See 14... :)
Don’t laugh maybe every 20K years or so we have a large group of comets come in from the cloud with enough diffuse gas and dust to lower solar radiation reaching Earth causing an Ice Age
Or maybe we pass periodically through a band of gas and dust for the same effect.
“Don’t laugh maybe every 20K years or so we have a large group of comets come in from the cloud with enough diffuse gas and dust to lower solar radiation reaching Earth causing an Ice Age”
In planetary age measurement...that’s often!
We are above or below the galatic band and not as many dust particles and rocks and comets but like being at the beach by the ocean when you are laying down you notice the sand particles sandblasting you.
One day Earth will be sandblasted!
Voyager has now left the “Solar System” in the sense that it is beyond the Solar Wind. But according to NASA it is still 300 years until it reaches the Oort Cloud. Mind boggling.
There is a good theory, one that I adhere to, that there was once a blue-white giant main sequence star where our Sun (Sol) is now. When these stars go supernova, they create all the raw materials and minerals found in space.
Perhaps the Oort cloud is the last remnant of un-coelesced materials from the original star explosion, mostly ice and such, too far out to form a body.
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