Oort cloud is a solar shell, not galaxy‑wide
Question asked:
“The Oort cloud extends throughout the Milky Way galaxy, not just as a shell around the Sun between 5,000 and 100,000 AU.”
Summary
The Oort cloud is understood to be a roughly spherical shell of icy bodies surrounding the Sun, extending from about 2,000 AU to roughly 100,000–200,000 AU (0.03–3 light‑years). It does not span the entire Milky Way galaxy, which is tens of thousands of light‑years across.
Sources 60 searched
- The Oort Cloud – Explaining Science
The Solar System lies in the outer region of our Milky Way galaxy about 27 000 light years from the galactic centre. If we look at the Oort cloud, the side furthest away from the galactic centre experiences a weaker gravitational attraction ...
- Oort Cloud: Facts - NASA Science
The Oort Cloud is the most distant region in our solar system, and it's jaw-droppingly far away,extending perhaps one-quarter to halfway from our Sun to the next star.
- Oort Cloud
The Oort Cloud lies far beyond Pluto and the most distant edges of the Kuiper Belt.
- Oort Cloud and Scale of the Solar System (Infographic) - NASA Science
One AU is the distance from the sun to the Earth, which is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. Neptune, the most distant planet from the sun, is about 30 AU. Informally, the term "solar system" is often used to mean the space out ...
- Accidental find in planetarium show could shift scientists’ understanding of our solar system | CNN
The reason it’s there, he said, is that objects in the Oort Cloud are far away enough from the sun’s gravity that they also start being affected by the galactic tide — the gravitational field of our galaxy, exerted by the stars and the dark matter in it.
- Accidental discovery at New York planetarium unlocks secret into universe's inner workings | PBS News
The inner section of the Oort Cloud, made of billions of comets, resembled a bar with two waving arms, similar to the shape of our Milky Way galaxy.
- Oort cloud - Wikipedia
The Oort cloud (pronounced /ɔːrt/ ORT or /ʊərt/ OORT), sometimes called the Öpik–Oort cloud, is theorized to be a cloud of billions of icy planetesimals surrounding the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). Its existence was proposed in 1950 by ...
- Oort Cloud Facts and Location
The Oort Cloud begins at a distance of approximately 2,000 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun and extends outwards to about 100,000-200,000 AU. For comparison, 1 AU is the average distance from the Sun to the Earth, approximately 93 million ...
- The Oort Cloud and Close Stellar Encounters | Centauri Dreams
“With our new calculations, we show that the Oort cloud arose from a kind of cosmic conspiracy, in which nearby stars, planets and the Milky Way all play their part. Each of the individual processes alone would not be able to explain the Oort cloud. You really need the interplay and the right ...
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