Study suggests Oort Cloud may be home to more asteroids, comets than Solar system

A new study has suggested that the detection of Borisov, the first known interstellar comet to visit the solar system, implies that interstellar objects outnumber solar system objects in the Oort cloud. The astronomers have calculated a shell of debris in the farthest reaches of the solar system, according to ANI. The new paper comes in the wake of the arrival of Borisov, an icy snowball that travelled 110,000 miles per hour.

Oort cloud may have more interstellar objects

In 2019, the astronomers detected Borisov which is the first and only interstellar comet ever detected by humans. The findings of the study have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of The Royal Astronomical Society. Astronomers Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb at the Center for Astrophysics have presented new calculations showing that the Oort Cloud may be home to more visiting objects than objects that belong to the solar system.

Amir Siraj, a concurrent undergraduate and graduate student in Harvard's Department of Astronomy and lead author of the study informed that astronomers had no idea about the number of interstellar objects in the solar system before the detection of the first interstellar comet. Furthermore, Siraj mentioned in the press release that according to the formation of planetary systems, "there should be fewer visitors than permanent residents". Siraj added that they were trying to find 'more visitors'. The astronomers made the conclusions after observing Comet Borisov. Furthermore, astronomers explained that considering all these, interstellar visitors prevail over objects that are native to the solar system.

"Before the detection of the first interstellar comet, we had no idea how many interstellar objects there were in our solar system, but theory on the formation of planetary systems suggests that there should be fewer visitors than permanent residents", Siraj said in the press release. 

Siraj pointed out that the Oort Cloud spans a region some 200 billion to 100 trillion miles away from Sun. The astronomer added that objects in the Oort Cloud do not produce their own light. According to astronomers, these two reasons make it very extremely difficult to see debris in the outer solar system. Senior astrophysicist Matthew Holman, former director of the Center for Astrophysics Minor Planet Center, who was not involved in the research, informed that the results are exciting as they have implications for objects even closer than the Oort Cloud.

"These results suggest that the abundances of interstellar and Oort cloud objects are comparable closer to the Sun than Saturn," Holman said in the press release. 

(Inputs from ANI)

(Image Credits: Unsplash/RepresentativeImage)