SPACE — The Oort cloud, or known as the Oort cloud in English, is a layer of icy objects that surrounds the solar system. Located outside the Kuiper Belt and even beyond the reach of the Sun’s magnetic field, the Oort Cloud is technically in interstellar space.
It is estimated that there are billions to trillions of objects in the Oort Cloud, some of which are the size of dwarf planets. Many long-period comets originate in the Oort Cloud, and almost all objects that approach the inner solar system also originate there.
These comets consist of frozen gas and dust. However, in 2022, researchers managed to identify an unusual rock object originating from the Oort Cloud.
According to an article published in 2019 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysicsthe interaction of objects in the Oort Cloud with passing stars, dust clouds, or the weak gravitational attraction produced by the Milky Way galaxy can direct these objects towards the Sun.
Although the concept of the Oort Cloud was first proposed in the 1950s, its great distance from Earth makes it difficult for scientists to identify the objects within it.
Here are some interesting facts about the Oort Cloud:
1. The Oort Cloud is a collection of comets and small objects measuring kilometers which are remnants of the process of forming the solar system. These objects orbit the Sun.
2. The formation of the Oort Cloud occurs when dust and ice grains come together and grow into a larger object over time. Small objects that approach giant planets, called planetesimals, are then thrown outside the solar system and trapped in the Oort Cloud.
3. Because it is so far away, the Oort cloud is difficult to study. According to the American Space Agency (NASA) the inner edge of the Oort cloud is likely to be between 2,000 and 5,000 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. AStronomic units are the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
4. The outer edge of the Oort cloud, which researchers predict could reach 10,000 AU, or even 100,000 AU, may reach almost half the distance between the sun and its closest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri.
5. Objects in the Oort Cloud likely move in more random orbital patterns than objects in the inner solar system. Most objects orbiting the sun orbit in the same plane, such as the planets, the asteroid belt, and the Kuiper Belt.
Their orbits put all the objects generally in one flat disk around the sun. But the Oort cloud is likely a full sphere circling the solar system, like a thick ice bubble in space.
6. The Oort Cloud is named after the Dutch astronomer, Jan Oort, who first proposed its existence in the 1950s. Jan Oort proposed that some comets entering the solar system may have originated in the icy layer now named the Oort cloud.
7. Oort and other astronomers noticed that there are two types of comets that traverse the solar system, namely short period and long period. Short period comets (which may be seen more than once in a lifetime,) originate from the Kuiper Belt.
2024-02-18 23:55:00
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