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Life Inside the Oort Cloud
It’s there because I put it there
Warning: This doesn’t end the way you might expect, but I promise, most of it is fascinating sciencey stuff, and it really is connected with my forthcoming novel. So no booing and hissing, please.
The Oort Cloud has the oddest-sounding name of any feature in our solar system, unless you happen to speak Dutch or are astronomically literate, in which case you’ll recognize the name.
Said cloud is Dutch astronomer Jan Oort’s baby . . . sort of. In 1932, Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik suggested that an orbiting cloud of icy objects on the remote fringes of the solar system was the source of long-period comets. The idea didn’t gain much traction until, in 1950, Oort independently advanced the hypothesis. Today, the Oort Cloud (or Öpik-Oort Cloud, but that’s rather a mouthful, not to mention it might sound like a walrus with the hiccups) is widely accepted as a vast, remote sphere of comets just waiting to plunge sunward for our awe and inspiration.
Bear in mind, this is hypothesis, not established fact. The Oort Cloud should be there based on current models of solar system formation, but we’ve never seen an Oort Cloud object, nor have we gotten there.
No, really, we haven’t. We’ve been to every planet in the solar system. We’ve gotten up close and…
