What is the Oort Cloud?

Firefly42

It is a hypothesized spherical cloud of comets which may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud Jun 18 12, 7:30 PM

beergirllaura

This is an interesting video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CnGRnz9Fi4 Jun 18 12, 7:43 PM

mehaul

The Oort cloud is that material remaining which didn't fall into the accretion disk when the Sun and planets were formed. The material is still under the influence of the sun's gravity well and therefore doesn't wander away. Some of the material is occasionally nudged by the influence of other objects there to fall deeper into the sun's gravity well. When they warm up by swinging close to the Sun, we call them comets. Some of those remain in the inner part of the solar system and live through repeated solar encounters. Some swing back out to the Oort Cloud never to be seen again. When we think of objects so far away from the Sun, we think of super cold objects. There may be warm environments out there though. Certainly some massive objects would attract other smaller objects into a capture orbit and form a system like the Jovian (Jupiter) Magnetic and gravitational stresses could cause some of those moons to warm up like Io is around Jupiter. That means there may be easily habitable bodies existing in the Oort Cloud. At present, our telescopes are telling us a lot more about objects orbiting far distant stars that they are telling us of our own system. Discovery of planet size objects in the Oort Cloud will come but purely by accident. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ort_cloud Jun 20 12, 11:03 AM