Articles by Angelina

Man’s spirit of adventure and the thirst to understand the universe knows no bounds. No matter how vast, how dark and how mysterious the deep cold space has proven to be, humans have not lost the hope of being an interplanetary and possibly intergalactic species. Despite past failures and disappointments, machines continue to be sent into space, each being better than its predecessor. Among the mysteries that the cold deep space holds, is the Oort cloud. The curiosity to hold future explorations on the Oort cloud was heightened with the discovery of a planet called Sedna. It was quite a...

The tidal effects of the Oort cloud can lead to the occurrence of a number astronomical and global events. The tides are usually generated and propagated whenever the cloud comes into close encounters with spiral arms or other gravitational phenomena such as the molecular clouds. The result is expulsion of objects like comets from the Oort cloud into the inner solar system. In some cases, the comets usually find themselves on a collision course with planets on the solar system. One of them being Earth. When a comet bombards or explodes on the Earth surface, there can be massive geological...

The Oort cloud is believed to be the source of the long period comets. In fact, comets have been theorized to be residing inside this vast cloud of icy volatiles. Although some comets have been known to originate from the Kuiper Belt due to gravitational interaction between objects in the region, credit can also be given to the Oort cloud. Especially in the case of the long period comets. These comets are have been observed to appear out of nowhere and orbit or smash into the Sun (Cain, 2018). Studies have also shown that comets contain similar material as those...

The composition of the Oort cloud is almost similar to that of the Kuiper Belt. This is because it also contains a huge reservoir of Neptunian objects. The cloud occupies a vast area in the outer solar system as it stretches from 2, 000 AU all the way up to 50, 000 AU with reference to the position of the Sun (Williams, 2018). Oort cloud’s edge extends as far as 100,000 AU or 200, 000 AU from the Sun and into space the deep cold space. This cloud is not one homogeneous sphere but it is actually divided into 2...

The Oort cloud is relatively 100,000 times further away from the sun with reference to planet Earth. The cloud is very vast on the cold outer edges of the solar system. The nearest and most inner objects of this cloud are found approximately 2,000 AU from the sun (Redd, 2018). The region where these innermost objects are found is called the Kuiper Belt. However, they are found towards the far edges of the Belt itself. The main body of the cloud is so far-stretched that it can feel the effects of a nearby passing star or nebula. In fact, its...