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And presumably the next star's own Oort cloud goes halfway to us, meeting ours in the middle? I remember some people a while back playing with the idea that th
by mrec 12y ago
And presumably the next star's own Oort cloud goes halfway to us, meeting ours in the middle?
I remember some people a while back playing with the idea that the practical way for humanity to colonize the stars was by very gradually "rock-hopping through the Oort cloud", as opposed to "One Giant Leap" approaches like generation ships or crossing our fingers and desperately hoping for hyperdrive.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> And presumably the next star's own Oort cloud goes halfway to us I don't know that we have enough information about how the size of Oort-like clouds would relate to other observable cahracteristics of stars to have a reasonable basis for any conclusion about the size of "Oort clouds" of other nearby star systems.
- mrec 12y agoYou're right, "presumably" was much too strong a word. "Potentially", maybe.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoWe assume gravity, the speed of light etc are the same everywhere. What reason have we to suppose our own stellar neighborhood is the only one to have an Oort cloud? If we assume physics is the same everywhere, then this cloud would extend throughout the galaxy.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoThe Oort cloud in fact extends far enough from Sol that some objects in it could be affected by nearby stars - that is, the stars could be sharing/trading Oort objects. In fact, they must be, because gravity. So to deny that our nearest neighbor has Oort objects, we'd have to invent some mechanism that prevented it.
- mrec 12y agoI don't think anyone's suggesting that only Sol has an Oort cloud, but the Oort is a (very extended) part of the Solar system, orbiting the Sun like the rest of us, not something spread evenly throughout the galaxy. Stars don't all have the same sort of planets; it'd be surprising if they all had the same sort of Oort.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoOort objects are ill-behaved (erratic orbits). Inevitably some would wander off. Neighboring stars would have at least some Oort objects? Or we need to imagine a mechanism that prevents this.
- mrec 12y agoAgain, I think we're in violent agreement. The question wasn't whether they're likely to have some, it was more about how many and how far out, and more specifically whether it's likely to be feasible to hop from our Oort to e.g. Centauri's without having to traverse a huge void in between.
- Retra 12y agoWe just need to invent slower clocks!