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How was Oort cloud discovered?

Updated: 6/30/2023
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14y ago

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The Oort cloud is a hypothetical area of space comprising a spherical cloud of comets which lies roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light year, from the Sun.

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13y ago
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14y ago

The "Oort Cloud" is an area far beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto which may contain the left-over remnants of the birth of the solar system.

This is entirely theoretical; we have very little actual evidence of the Oort Cloud. The idea is that stray masses, very loosely bound by gravity to the distant Sun, will occasionally perturb each other and a small, icy and rocky body may be nudged into the inner solar system. When it gets close enough, the ice will start to melt and the vapor will glow - and we see a comet. Comets have to come from somewhere, and this idea makes as much sense as anything.

But we've never detected anything in the Oort Cloud, and probably won't until we manage to send space probes out to the distance where the Sun is just a bright star.

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14y ago

The solar system has been in existence for about 4.5 billion years, we believe. But there is NO WAY that a comet can survive for 4.5 billion years if it is diving into the inner solar system every few millennia and boiling off some of its volatile gasses. And yet, we still have comets.

In 1950, the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort proposed the idea that there must be a reservoir of comet-like objects orbiting very far from the Sun, and only occasionally does something perturb a few of these bodies and drop them into the inner solar system as comets. Oort's hypothesis was that there must be a shell or "cloud" of frozen comet nuclei way out beyond the planets, from 2000 to 50,000 AU from the Sun. Occasionally, because of gravitational perturbations between these objects or with the Sun or other stars or other stars in the galaxy, one or a few of these would be nudged into orbits that took them deeper into the solar system.

We do not have any evidence that the Oort Cloud actually exists; it is too far away, and the objects believed to be there are too small and dark to be observed even with the largest telescopes. But the idea makes sense, because if there isn't something like the Oort Cloud around the solar system, why are we still seeing comets?

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13y ago

EVERY BIT of evidence for the existence of the Oort Cloud is contained in the following statements:

The solar system is 4.5 billion years old. A comet can only survive a limited number of close approaches to the Sun before hitting a planet, or the Sun, or disintegrating. However, there are still comets! Therefore, there must be some vast reservoir of comet-like objects somewhere and some mechanism that causes these objects to fall into the inner solar system.

Astronomer Jan Oort assumed that the reservoir of comet-like objects waiting in deep space is probably far beyond the orbit of Pluto. In his honor, the area of unborn comets is called the Oort Cloud.

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13y ago

Jan Oort discovered the oort cloud in 1950.

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11y ago

The Oort cloud formed 4.5 BYA (billion years ago). This is evident by the fact that hypothetically it lies at the edge of the Sun's gravitational boundary.

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13y ago

At the moment in time there is no observational evidence of it's existence. Until such time, it will stay as a theory.

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14y ago

About three light years from the sun.

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13y ago

1 light year.

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11y ago

ily

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