Message-Id: <v01530501af5e5a55ed7d@[207.90.162.215]>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 21:33:12 -0800
To: pinhole@exploratorium.edu
From: ronwong@unleashed.net
Subject: Re: orbit of comets
Dan Gray asked:
>...................................... are most of them orbiting in
>the same plane as the planets?
No. The plane of past comets have been found to form every which angle with
the plane of the planets.
> ...........If not, then why not?
To explain the long period comets like Hale-Bopp, we have the work by Jan
Oort originally published in 1950. It is still undergoing refinements, but
basically our solar system sits in the middle of a vast shell consisting of
up to 200 billion comets (the Oort cloud) - leftovers from the time of our
solar system's formation. To give you some idea of its scale, consider a
dime to be the size of our solar system out to the planet Pluto. If it sat
in the middle of the Oort cloud, it would find itself in the middle of a
shell 10 meters in radius.
There are a number of mechanisms that might explain what would set one of
these comets in motion wherein they would fall into our sun and begin
orbiting about it. One of the more important ones is galactic tidal forces
generated within our galaxy by the nucleus as well as by the plane of
stellar matter. The effect produced is random in nature and thus the
apparent lack of preference in the orientation of the plane of orbit for
the comets.
The whole thing is mind-boggling.
Ron Wong