What Oort Cloud?

Many astronomers claim there is an Oort Cloud which supposedly injects new comets into our Solar System while the comets orbiting in the Solar System burn up, but there is no evidence of this Oort Cloud, so is this not just a necessitated imaginary construction which enables astronomers to say that the Solar System can be billions of years old, since "the Oort Cloud exists?"

 

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We have to wait for better telescopes to come online to give the final prove or falsification of the Oort Cloud.

I could be wrong, but somehow your screen name suggests to me that you would like to prepare the stage for a Planet X / Nemesis discussion ?

 

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"Final prove?" There is no evidence at all that the Oort cloud exists, just wishful thinking by astronomers who feel compelled to insist that the Solar System is billions of years old.

 

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Fortunately, there is no wishful thinking in science. We don't just come up with ideas and say, wow I like that... i guess its right! There are theoretical calculations that suggest that there is a halo of icy debris way far out there. Given the history of comets, their orbits, the sun's gravitational field, etc., one can propose its existence.

No, its not difinitvely proven. But neither is gravity. Do you doubt gravity?

 

I can't see why this would prove that the solar system isn't billion of years old. The oort cloud explain a couple of things indirectly that the sol system is of certain age, but thats proven by so many other facts. It would however rise the quistion of where all those comets keep coming from but from...

 

Yeah, right.

 

It is the orbits of comets that provide the evidence for the existence of the Oort cloud.

 

I do agree that "The Oort cloud" often is taken for granted or presented in literature as fact rather than a reasonable working theory based upon circumstantial evidence.

Anyway, I surely hope better telescopes will allow us to see what is really out there, for all I know there could be brown dwarfs or something.

But until the final look and see, I personally think the Oort cloud theory is one of the more attractive theories...

 

There is no Oort cloud; comets are from god and the angels having snowball fights.

 

..wich allows astromers to say that the solarsystem could be billiones of years old since the angels have been snowballing us from the very start.

All roads seem to lead to an old solarsystem ;-)

 

Oh really? And what would you be refering to?

 

Aids

 

So those planetoids they've been finding - Sedna, et al, - aren't where they say they are, or aren't part of a " cloud", or what?

Orbits get calculated pretty precisely, these days. Kind of odd that something would muck up the comet orbits in just the right way to make it look as though they came from the Oort Cloud distance,when they didn't.

 

You can look it up on Wikipedia.

 

The least credible hypothesis to me is the idea that comets somehow just drop out of the "Oort Cloud." To have any chance at all of knocking a chunk of ice and rock down into the solar system, something has to have a gravity well that is a lot wider than that of another comet. After that, you still don't have a way to explain short term comets.

 

You are correct IceAge. There is no evidence for an 'Oort cloud'. Even if there were an 'Oort cloud', what would cause it to suddenly eject comets into the solar system? If the comets are pulled in by the Sun, wouldn't they just fall straight into the sun? Why would they go into orbit around the Sun instead of just falling straight into it?

 

You are trolling yet again. Why invoke a conjectured and as yet unobserved Oort Cloud to prove the age of the solar system when there is plenty of direct evidence? Real scientists don't do that.

These planetoids are Kuiper Belt objects. We do not yet have the resolution power to see Oort Cloud objects.

Oort Cloud objects, if they exist, are already in orbit around Sun. Something such as another star perturbs these orbits, sending them into the inner solar system. The gas giants then perturb the orbits further. It would be very, very hard to make these objects hit the Sun.

 

Thanks for the stimulation / additional support for my idea that there are many small black holes in the universe. I had not thought of this argument for their existence.

For more about my original reason for this POV see:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1364764&postcount=3
and the links there.

 

Such is the out-of-sight, out-of-mind intellectual approach which purveyors of this fiction much project in order to avoid the clear implications of their hallucinations.

 

What? Look what up on Wikipedia? Wishful thinking? Ummm, ok....


"Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs and making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence or rationality.

Studies have consistently shown that holding all else equal, subjects will predict positive outcomes to be more likely than negative outcomes. See positive outcome bias.

Prominent examples of wishful thinking include:

* Economist Irving Fisher said that "stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau" a few weeks before Stock Market Crash of 1929, which was followed by the Great Depression.
* British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain informed the public that the 1938 Munich Agreement guaranteed "peace in our time".
* Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's plan for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
* President John F. Kennedy believed that, if overpowered by Cuban forces, the CIA-backed rebels could "escape destruction by melting into the countryside" in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
"