Headlines:
It is easy to think of our solar neighborhood as a tight little cluster of planets, but the reality is far more expansive. Beyond Neptune, a crowd of frozen bits and pieces lingers in the Kuiper Belt, yet that is only the start of our Sun's extended family.
Farther out ⁘ about 9.3 trillion miles away ⁘ sits the Oort Cloud, which some refer to as the outermost boundary of the Solar System.
This region is believed to hold countless icy objects that still feel the Sun's pull, no matter how faint. Many have viewed this area as a scattered collection, with most of its bodies quietly resting in near isolation.
However, according to a recent study, there is a surprising spiral pattern in the inner Oort Cloud that runs much deeper than a random sprinkling of frozen debris.
The Oort Cloud is usually divided into two zones. The outer part stretches in a spherical shell and starts at around 10,000 astronomical units from the Sun.
The inner Oort Cloud begins closer in ⁘ roughly 1,000 astronomical units out ⁘ and forms what was once considered a disc-shaped region.
Scientists have long believed that the outer shell experiences more disruptions from passing stars, while the inner zone is held together by the Sun's gravity.
Some of the comets that swing through the inner Solar System , including long-period comets, can be traced to these distant reaches.
Its outer boundary marks a sort of transition point where the Sun's Hill sphere merges with the Milky Way 's gravitational influence. Astronomical models show that the outer Oort Cloud is only loosely connected to the Sun.
No comments:
Post a Comment