Definitions for oort cloud

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Princeton's WordNet

  1. Oort cloud(noun)



  1. Oort Cloud(ProperNoun)

    A roughly spherical region of space from 50,000 to 100,000 astronomical units (approximately 1 light year) from the sun; supposedly the source of most comets.

  2. Origin: Named after Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort.


  1. Oort cloud

    The Oort cloud, or Öpik–Oort cloud, is a hypothesized spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun. This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The Kuiper belt and the scattered disc, the other two reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects, are less than one thousandth of the Oort cloud's distance. The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the cosmographical boundary of the Solar System and the region of the Sun's gravitational dominance. The Oort cloud is thought to comprise two separate regions: a spherical outer Oort cloud and a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud, or Hills cloud. Objects in the Oort cloud are largely composed of ices, such as water, ammonia, and methane. Astronomers believe that the matter composing the Oort cloud formed closer to the Sun and was scattered far out into space by the gravitational effects of the giant planets early in the Solar System's evolution. However, citing the Southwest Research Institute, NASA published a 2010 article that includes the following quotation: We know that stars form in clusters. The Sun was born within a huge community of other stars that formed in the same gas cloud. In that birth cluster, the stars were close enough together to pull comets away from each other via gravity.

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