HackingTheUniverse

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In 1950, Dutch astronomer Jan Oort (building on an idea originated by Ernst Opik) proposed that a hypothetical and massive cloud of comets that orbit far from the center of our solar system might explain why comets don’t seem to originate from deep space and often have an outer orbital edge about 20-50,000 AUs from [...]

Discovered in 1992, the Kuiper Belt is a large expanse of space just outside the edge of our solar system that contains a large number of small objects. This belt is similar to the asteroid belt, but is much larger, much farther away and may contain more frozen water and volatile gases than the metallic [...]