The Oort Cloud is a ring that is made up of millions of planetary debris resulting from the collision between planets. In the next article we will know everything about What is the Oort Cloud? and everything related to this type of event that gives rise to what we know as Comets.
What is the Oort Cloud?
La Oort Cloud, it is a kind of balloon that is located at a farther distance from Pluto's orbit, where comets come from that on certain occasions we can see when they pass through the sky.
Supposedly this must be made up of thousands of "debris" from the solar system itself, also by a few minimal bodies that came out of the solar system due to collisions with the so-called Proto-Planets, they are bodies that later are the ones that made up all the planets.
Certain bodies tend to be ejected from this cloud which, when approaching the Sun, heat up to high temperatures and the ice on their surface evaporates, causing what is known as solar storms.
The reason why these comets jump into the interior of the Solar System is still not very clear, however, the galactic tides have even been taken into consideration, even what is the possible so-called "Twin Star" of the Sun, the which would be called Nemesis, since its passing close to the solar system itself is what causes what many scientists call "Showers of Comets" which is what explains the presence of Cataclysms on Planet Earth.
History
Comets come to appreciate a wide range of sizes in the orbits of comets, in addition to certain inclinations and eccentricities. In earlier times, all comets were classified into 2 large groups that are based on their orbital period, which are:
- Long Period Comets: With times that are greater than 200 years.
- The Short Period Comets: With times of less than 200 years.
In the case of long-term comets, they have 2 characteristics that are the most notable: The first one is that their orbits tend to come together in huge groups. The second is that the intrusion in the zone of the planets tends to be isotropic, which means that it does not have a preferred direction.
Other than this, about 50% of all long-term comets become so-called retrograde comets, which is usually consistent with their random distribution.
It became a very general kind of belief that comets come from interstellar space or that they usually orbit at great distances in stars and that gravitational alterations are what may cause some of them to be trapped by the same stars. nearby. However, by the year 1950 the renowned astronomer of Dutch origin named Jan Oort He was the one who revealed the following:
- It would not have been possible to observe any type of comet that would indicate that it came from interstellar space.
- The comets that enter the solar system would suffer disturbances from all the planets, especially Jupiter, because there are a large number of cometary peaks in long periods. This means that a large number of them entered the solar system for the first time, since otherwise their orbits would already be modified due to the gravitational disturbances of the much larger planets.
- The orbits of all the long-lived comets came to have a kind of marked preference with respect to their aphelion reaching out to 50.000 AU.
- The origin of the comets was not from a preferential direction.
Starting with these theories, it was even proposed that the origin of comets is from an extensive cloud outside the confines of the solar system itself. Said Cloud, over the years, came to be called as the Oort Cloud. According to statistics, it is estimated that there are 1 billion comets, despite the fact that it is a pure non-concrete estimate; because there has been no person capable of visualizing this Oort Cloud, much less all the objects that surround it.
These objects would come to form during the first phases of the creation of the great Solar System in the vicinity of the Sun, however, they would come to have been emitted in the direction of the confines of the solar system by the same effect of gravitational forces. All those objects that did not escape from the orbit of said cloud are part of it.
Certain objects of said Oort Cloud, due to the insistence produced by a certain kind of nearby star, would end up being expelled from the cloud towards the Sun, where they move on a journey of millions of years until one day when its orbit is altered due to the same effect of gravity of all those large planets, for example:
- Jupiter
- Saturn
So that some of these become what we all know as long-period comets, despite the fact that some of them when they pass through the passage of the solar system are lost for their entire existence in outer space without going back. .
Features
The Oort Cloud can support a very important portion of what is the mass of the solar system, which could be more enormous than that of the Planet Jupiter, despite the fact that it is a minimal theory. There is a tendency to think that this may be a kind of balloon that completely encloses the entire solar system and that the most appropriate theory is that it is created by the many debris in the solar system.
Indeed, during its beginnings the Sun was located by a kind of cloud of gas and also of dust, from which the great infinity of planetesimals began to form and by the grouping of these, all the planets originated. .
A part of all these planetesimals came to suffer enormous alterations at the orbital level as a consequence of each one of their encounters with the other bodies of great mass that are known as the proto-planets and in such a way that they managed to acquire their long orbits that are almost parabolic and that finally were "accumulated" within the Oort Cloud, at an average separation of 1 light year where it continues to be dominant with respect to all those stars that are nearby despite the weak gravitational influence of the Sun.
Comets staying in the Oort Cloud
The number will depend on the consistency with which all those Oort Cloud comets are usually launched into interplanetary space. According to the visualized number of long-term comets, many astronomers currently calculate that it has about 6 billion comets; which are much larger in size than the solar system.
Only a sixth of them is the one that belongs to the dynamic and external cloud that Oort described it; the others are in its core, which is much denser than we imagine. If a much better estimate were to be applied to the mean mass of a comet, it would be about 40.0000 million Metric Tons, which would result in the total mass of all comets in the Oort Cloud being about 40 times larger than that of Planet Earth.
Oort Cloud comets can be perturbed by the gravity of passing stars. In fact, all the stars in the Milky Way's disk share a common motion around the center of the galaxy, but they also move relative to each other. Stars approach from random directions, so speed changes are sometimes positive and sometimes negative.
This astronomer named Oort was the one who assumed that comets originated within the asteroid belt and were expelled by the giant planets in the course of the creation of the solar system. However, comets are frozen masses, like a kind of giant ball of dirty snow; inside the asteroid belt it is impossible for ice fragments to condense because of the high temperatures.
From where is its existence deduced?
In the year 1932, the renowned astronomer named Erns Öpik came to postulate that comets that usually orbit for long periods came to be originated within a very large cloud that goes beyond all the confines of the solar system. In the year 1950, another famous astronomer named Jan Oort was the person who independently postulated the well-known theory, which results in a paradox.
Jan Oort is the one who affirmed that all the meteorites were not formed in their current orbit, due to the astronomical phenomena that preside over it, for which he assures that their orbits and all these must have been accumulated within of a huge cloud. Because of these 2 recognized men in astronomy, said Oort Cloud gets its name.
The astronomer Oort was the one who investigated between the 2 types of comets. The first are all those that have an orbit that is less than 10 AU and the second are all those that have long period orbits that are almost isotropic, usually exceeding 1.000 AU even reaching 20.000.
On the other hand, he was the person who watched as all of these came from all directions of the galaxy. That was what allowed him to deduce that, if they came from all directions, the "Possible" cloud should come to have a kind of spherical shape.
What exists and does the Oort Cloud encompass?
According to the theories of the origin of this cloud called the Oort Cloud, it is located within the formation of what is our solar system and also from all the great shocks that came to exist and from the same materials that were expelled by these same shocks. All the objects that form it were formed near the origin of the Sun.
However, the gravitational processes also of the large planets themselves came to distort their orbits, expelling them to areas further away from where they truly are. Within this great Oort cloud we can differentiate about 2 parts that are:
The Inner Oort Cloud
It is gravitationally more associated with the Sun. It is also called the "Hills Cloud", which has the shape of a disk. This reaches between 2.000 and 20.000 AU.
The Outer Oort Cloud
This becomes spherical in shape, which is much more associated with the other stars and with what is the galactic tide, which comes to modify the orbits of all the planets, making them much more circular. This usually measures between 20.000 and 50.000 AU. We can emphasize that it is truly the gravitational limit of the Sun.
The Oort Cloud becomes a set, which includes all the planets that are part of the solar system, including dwarf planets, all meteorites, comets, and even a large number of billions of celestial bodies that have more 1,3 km in diameter.
Despite there being a significant number of celestial bodies, the separation between each of them can be estimated to be tens of millions of kilometers.
The mass that there is in total that it would have is something unknown to astronomers, however, making a kind of approximate, taking the well-known "Halley's Comet" as an example, it has been possible to calculate more or less in about 3 × 10 ^ 25 kg, which means that it is about 5 times larger than that of Planet Earth.
The tidal effect in the Oort Cloud and on Earth
In the same way that the moon comes to exert a kind of force on all the seas of the planet earth, causing the tides to rise, it has been theorized that this type of phenomenon usually happens galactically. The separation that exists between one object with respect to another is what minimizes the gravity that one can influence the other.
In order to understand this phenomenon, we can highlight the force of gravity that it exerts on the Earth movements, both the Moon and the Sun. All according to the position where the Moon is with respect to the Sun and the Planet Earth, so the tides can vary in terms of their magnitude. An alignment with the big red star (Sun), will influence gravity on the planet in such a way that this is what makes the tide rise too much.
Now, in the case of Oort Cloud, we can describe that it can represent all the liquid parts of the planet such as the seas and in the case of the Milky Way it is the one that can represent the Moon. This is known as the tidal effect, which is what causes a deformation in the interior of the galaxy.
Always taking into account that the gravitational force of the Sun is usually lighter when it moves further away from it, which said minimum force is usually what is necessary to be able to disturb the movements of certain celestial bodies, which prevents them from being sent again to the sun.
Cycles of Extinction of Species on Our Planet
One thing that all scientists have managed to prove is that every so often, specifically every 26 million years, there is a kind of pattern that repeats itself. It comes to dealing with a considerable number of species that is in extinction during these periods. Although it is not possible to truly affirm why this type of phenomenon happens. One hypothesis that can be taken into account is the tidal effect of the Milky Way on this Oort Cloud.
If we take into account that the Sun is revolving around the galaxy and that the so-called "Galactic Plane" usually passes through its orbit with some small regularity, these extinction cycles can be described.
It has been calculated that between 20 to 25 million years, the great red star (Sun) comes to pass through what is the galactic plane. When this usually happens, the force of gravity that it would exert on said plane would be enough to completely disturb the Oort cloud. Which was taken into account that this was going to shake and disturb all the bodies that are part of the Cloud. A large part of them would be sent back into the Sun's orbit.
Alternative Theory
Other great astronomers have come to consider that the Sun is already very close to the galactic plane and the certain considerations regarding this tend to suggest that the disturbance could come from the so-called "Spiral Arms" of the great Galaxy. It is true that there are a large number of molecular clouds, however, they are also full of the so-called Blue Giants.
These are huge stars and, apart from their large size, they have a much shorter lifetime than normal, because they quickly consume their nuclear fuel. Every certain number of years some of these giant blue stars tend to explode, which gives rise to the so-called Supernovae. This is what explains why the Oort Cloud becomes shaken on many occasions and affects it in certain ways.
Regardless of how it is, these events cannot be perceived with the naked eye, however, Planet Earth continues to be a kind of 1 grain of sand within an infinity of systems. From our galaxy to the Moon or satellites of mars, have come to affect their origin, life and the entire existence of things that the planet has carried. A lot of things are happening right now in the solar system, even beyond our understanding.
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