Oort cloud hypothesis
Hipótesis de la nube de Oort
- Date
- 1950 · confidence high
- Place
- Leiden Observatory, Leiden, Netherlands
- Credited to
- Jan Oort
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Oort proposed that a vast spherical reservoir of icy cometary nuclei surrounds the Solar System at tens of thousands of AU, supplying the long-period comets we observe; the cloud has never been directly observed but explains their dynamical origin.
Ernst Öpik had proposed a similar idea in 1932; the cloud has never been directly observed, only inferred from the dynamics of long-period comets.
What it led to
- Standard model for the origin of long-period comets
- Search for extreme trans-Neptunian objects
- Nemesis hypothesis of a solar companion to explain periodic extinctions