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> Oumuamua is the first object human beings have ever seen in our solar system that is known to have originated outside of it. Does this mean all the comets we
by sumedh 8y ago
> Oumuamua is the first object human beings have ever seen in our solar system that is known to have originated outside of it.
Does this mean all the comets we see/track, all of them originated in the Solar system? I would have imagined at least few comets would have originated outside our solar system.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoThey're supposed to originate in the Oort cloud. And our star system currently seems to be the only one with an Oort cloud, which seems singularly unlikely. I imagine once we figure out why we can't see any other star's cloud, we'll relax the assertion that all comets are solar-local
- dragonwriter 8y ago> They're supposed to originate in the Oort cloud. Long-period comets are thought to originate in the Oort cloud, short-period comets in the scattered disc or the Kuiper belt, and main-belt comets in the asteroid belt. > They're supposed to originate in the Oort cloud. AFAIK, our Oort cloud hasn't been observed, only hypothesized from the behavior of long-period comets. Given that, it's kind of unsurprising we wouldn't have concrete evidence of extra-solar Oort clouds.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoI wonder if we could see comets transiting other stars, and make the same kind of inferences...
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Does this mean all the comets we see/track, all of them originated in the Solar system? It means that none of them individually are known to have originated outside, yes.