Is the Oort cloud real?

[camulus777]

Can you mine the ort cloud? Yes im sure if you were that strapped for very very common elements that you can get on almost every planet/moon in the solar system sure you can. But you should also take into consideration that it is very very far away taking about twenty years to get to. So a person would spend their entire adult life trying to get to a ball of ice and bring a small portion of it back. Not the most economic of missions.

[Langkard]

Can you mine the ort cloud? Yes im sure if you were that strapped for very very common elements that you can get on almost every planet/moon in the solar system sure you can. But you should also take into consideration that it is very very far away taking about twenty years to get to. So a person would spend their entire adult life trying to get to a ball of ice and bring a small portion of it back. Not the most economic of missions.

Attach SEP engines to the mostly water ice asteroids in the Oort Cloud and shift them onto a collision trajectory with Mars. Add water and atmosphere to Mars. The distance of the Oort objects makes them ideal for long, slow trajectory changes like that, as opposed to icy bodies in orbit around Saturn or Jupiter, which would need more delta-V to shift out of those gravity wells. Or, even more efficient than than SEP, use solar power to heat the water ice to steam and use the steam to produce thrust.

[JebidiahsBigSister]

I've seen several instances of people talking trash about Oort cloud. Is that some new crackpot fashion?

Yeah? Well your Oort cloud is so old that the website it uses to hook up is called "Carbon Dating"

Edited October 24, 2013 by JebidiahsBigSister

[Motokid600]

Can you mine the ort cloud? Yes im sure if you were that strapped for very very common elements that you can get on almost every planet/moon in the solar system sure you can. But you should also take into consideration that it is very very far away taking about twenty years to get to. So a person would spend their entire adult life trying to get to a ball of ice and bring a small portion of it back. Not the most economic of missions.

20 years? The Oort cloud is a light year from the sun. More like 200 years if not more.

The problem here is terminology. The use of the word "cloud" I believe is wrong. The Oort region sounds better imo. Cloud gives off the impression of being a dense, observable object. Which is not really the case.

It's a lot like the asteroid belt. When the average Joe thinks of the belt they picture a traffic jam of rocks bouncing off one another. ( if this was the case you'd be able to see the belt with the naked eye as a faint gray line shooting across the night sky ) When in reality if you were standing on an object in the asteroid belt the next nearest asteroid would appear no larger then a star in the sky.

And its the same with the Oort cloud. It's there... But its so far away and its so diluted to the point of getting a large "cloud" like picture is all but impossible. All we can do is observe individual objects. We need a more powerful telescope. I hope the James Webb doesn't get canceled because it would put this debate to rest.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Motokid600

[JebidiahsBigSister]

20 years? The Oort cloud is a light year from the sun.

No It's not

[Motokid600]

No It's not

"a hypothesized spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun.[3] This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri"

One light year = 63,241.077 astronomical units.

Oort Cloud = 50,000 astronomical units.

So not quite a light year, but damn "near".

[lajoswinkler]

20 years? The Oort cloud is a light year from the sun. More like 200 years if not more.

The problem here is terminology. The use of the word "cloud" I believe is wrong. The Oort region sounds better imo. Cloud gives off the impression of being a dense, observable object. Which is not really the case.

It's a lot like the asteroid belt. When the average Joe thinks of the belt they picture a traffic jam of rocks bouncing off one another. ( if this was the case you'd be able to see the belt with the naked eye as a faint gray line shooting across the night sky ) When in reality if you were standing on an object in the asteroid belt the next nearest asteroid would appear no larger then a star in the sky.

And its the same with the Oort cloud. It's there... But its so far away and its so diluted to the point of getting a large "cloud" like picture is all but impossible. All we can do is observe individual objects. We need a more powerful telescope. I hope the James Webb doesn't get canceled because it would put this debate to rest.

The same thing goes for nebulas. You can see them just because you're away from them. Once you're close, or even inside, it looks as if they've disappeared. Their density is so low.

[JebidiahsBigSister]

"a hypothesized spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun.[3] This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri"

The link clearly says "The region can be subdivided into a spherical outer Oort cloud of 20,000–50,000 AU (0.32–0.79 ly)," . Yes, there is an outer reagion that extends further however the Oort cloud is currently taken to be as close as .32 ly away - you have to read the entire article and not just the bits that you want.

[camulus777]

Attach SEP engines to the mostly water ice asteroids in the Oort Cloud and shift them onto a collision trajectory with Mars. Add water and atmosphere to Mars. The distance of the Oort objects makes them ideal for long, slow trajectory changes like that, as opposed to icy bodies in orbit around Saturn or Jupiter, which would need more delta-V to shift out of those gravity wells. Or, even more efficient than than SEP, use solar power to heat the water ice to steam and use the steam to produce thrust.

There is a problem with using solar power all the way out in the ort. Its very very far from our sun. Mot much power to gather when the sun looks almost as dim as all the other stars in the sky. Relatively speaking of course. Also the journey from the ort cloud would take decades. To colonize mars we would have to get the cor molten again so that it can have an active magnetosphere strong enough to deflect solar winds. Add billions of tons of carbon, nitrogen, and methane to get the atmosphere thick enough. And lastly up the gravity to at least .6 G rather than .32 otherwise things on mars will not be able to survive in a 1g environment for vary long. Venus and its upper atmosphere are a far better candidate for human colonization. A floating noncorrosive carbon nano-paper structure using breathable air as a lighter than air gas. Its earth temp in the upper layers of the atmosphere there and there is about the same amount of radiation.

[Dooz]

This is a flame war waiting to happen

[ThesaurusRex]

How can the Oort Cloud be real if our eyes aren't real?

[Ralathon]

How can the Oort Cloud be real if our eyes aren't real?

This discussion has been dead for half a year.

And last I checked my eyes are real. Or at the very least, the sensation of having eyes is real, which is all that matters in the end.

[ThesaurusRex]

Dad gummit, I didn't check the date.

Also, I was making a Jaden Smith quote.

[pxi]

I accidentally poked my eye pretty hard last night as I was falling asleep. That felt plenty real to me.

[DJEN]

XXXXXXXXX is a theory. not a fact. ... hmm... where I've last heard that line ?

Low-grade pseudoscientists?

[_Augustus_]

The Oort cloud is real. It stretches from probably somewhere in Sedna's orbit to about 2 light-years, although the outer region has a population density of 1 tiny rock per AU!

It's been theorized that in about 1,050,000 years, when the star Gliese 710 (Which I like to call "Nemesis" after the now-proven-impossible companion star theory) passes within 1 light-year of us it will disturb the Oort Cloud and send comets/iceballs on random trajectories.

Also, it's very likely that other stars have their own Oort clouds that may stretch even further!

Edited August 31, 2014 by _Augustus_

[Whirligig Girl]

The Oort Cloud is a theory. Not a fact. The Oort Cloud has not directly been observed, yet we can observe space beyond the Oort Cloud... Hmm...

http://www.notjustatheory.com/

You disgust me, Deviation.

EDIT: So this is a necro. Darn.

[Sky_walker]

Fun fact: It's speculated that our Oort cloud is in fact connected with the one of Alpha Centauri/Proxima Centauri system

Another speculation is that Solar System is in fact submerged in an interstellar cloud called G-cloud together with Alpha Centauri and Altair.

[_Augustus_]

Fun fact: It's speculated that our Oort cloud is in fact connected with the one of Alpha Centauri/Proxima Centauri system

Another speculation is that Solar System is in fact submerged in an interstellar cloud called G-cloud together with Alpha Centauri and Altair.

So you're saying we could be connected?

[PakledHostage]

It's been theorized that in about 50,000 years, when the star Ross 248 (Which I like to call "Nemesis" after the now-proven-impossible companion star theory) passes within 1.5 light-years of us it will disturb the Oort Cloud and send comets/iceballs on random trajectories.

I am curious where you're getting your information on Ross 248's close approach, and why you chose to necro a 4 month old thread for that matter? The best information that I could find says that Ross 248 will only approach to 3.024 LY of the sun in 36000 years time. It will be more distant than that again by 50000 years from now. AFIK, the star that will make the closest known approach to the Sun is Gliese 710, but it won't reach its closest proximity (possibly within 1 light year) until 1.4 million years from now.

[jfull]

The Oort Cloud is a theory. Not a fact. The Oort Cloud has not directly been observed, yet we can observe space beyond the Oort Cloud... Hmm...

the Oort Cloud isn't necessarily a true "cloud", and its definitely not anything that would block our view

rather, it is a collection of small objects, all on wildly different orbits very far from the sun

[Sky_walker]

the Oort Cloud isn't necessarily a true "cloud", and its definitely not anything that would block our view

rather, it is a collection of small objects, all on wildly different orbits very far from the sun

Whatever something is a cloud or not got nothing to deal with blocking our view.

Just like a real clouds don't block the sun (otherwise you'd have "night" during every cloudy day) - interstellar clouds don't do that either.

Only interstellar clouds, even these in a very high density, are by far less dense than anything we can observe here on earth. In fact distance between rocks in oort cloud is measured in astronomical units, cause kilometres are impractical.

And the fact that our cloud is made of rocks as opposite to hydrogen or other gases is nothing extraordinary - there are many clouds in the galaxies composed of hard matter, some speculate that dark nebulae are in fact regions of smaller and larger rocks much like our oort cloud only in higher density.

General picture of oort cloud in public eye is that it's some kind of sphere of rocks evenly surrounding our star system (and no other - there are even theories on why Alpha Centauri is suppose not to have one) bombarding us with a comet or asteroid from time to time, but considering how limited our perception of a distant small rocks is along with existence of objects like Eris - nearly a planets with extremely elliptical orbits - seems to suggest that we're submerged in a larger molecular cloud that's mostly been "eaten" by our and neighbour star systems, but the remains are still there, everywhere around and in between nearby stars, with no reason to believe that solar system is the only one to have rocks around it.

Edited August 13, 2014 by Sky_walker

[Jesrad]

Sedna is direct proof of the existence of Oort objects.

More fuel on the flamewar.

[Sky_walker]

There are many proofs of that, not just Sedna. Every year we discover an asteroid or comet with an orbit that indicates Oort Cloud origin.

[Monkeh]

How much mass is the Oort cloud postulated to contain?

Could big Oort clouds explain the missing universe mass that caused the creation of dark matter?

Could Oort objects combined with invisible interstellar dust and clouds, explain away the missing mass?

/ignorance