The #OortCloud—a shell of debris in the farthest reaches of our #SolarSystem—may consist of more #interstellar objects as compared to local bodies from our own system, as per new research.
Read: weather.com/en-IN/india/sp…
(📸: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle)
It was only two years ago that humans discovered Borisov: the first and only interstellar comet to enter our solar system from a completely foreign star system.
But now, the new study suggests such phenomena might not be too rare!
But if so, why have we only ever seen just one interstellar object so far?
According to study authors, that's simply because we don’t have the technology to see the others yet.
The #OortCloud is unbelievably far—about 321 billion to 16 trillion km away from our Sun! Also, the objects within the Cloud don’t produce their own light.
Combined, these factors make it incredibly difficult to spot the objects in the outer #SolarSystem.
📸: NASA/JPL-Caltech
While we don't have the required technology yet, that will change following the launch of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (slated for 2022) and the Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II) in late 2021.
The latter is specifically designed to detect faraway comets.
Meanwhile, the presence of interstellar objects in the #OortCloud suggests that there is a lot more debris leftover from the formation of planetary systems.
Therefore, studying such interstellar objects could help us unlock the secrets of how our planetary system formed!
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