Explained the origin of the farthest region of the Solar system
The Swedish and Polish astronomers described the formation of the Oort cloud is the farthest from the sun part of the Solar system. A study accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and is available on the website arXiv.org.
Scientists conducted a computer simulation in which the formation of the Oort cloud started at a time when the Sun was part of a star cluster, the total mass of which is ten thousand times superior to the sun.
Experts tracked the evolution of the Oort cloud, containing about three thousand of comets for several hundred million years. During this time, the Sun interacted with the 20 nearest stars. All scientists have conducted thousands of simulations considering different parameters of the orbits of celestial bodies in the Oort cloud.
It turned out that the best chance for their preservation of this area have received if she had small sizes. For example, if initially the Oort cloud was at a distance of 5-20 thousand astronomical units from the Sun, then most likely, it would have quickly collapsed.
The greatest chance for conservation came to the cloud semi-major axes of the orbits of comets which did not exceed three thousand astronomical units. Scientists believe that these parameters had the ancient Oort cloud. Otherwise, the structure, the existence of which is allowed on the outskirts of the Solar system, up to the present time have been preserved only partially.
The Oort cloud — a hypothetical region on the edge of the Solar system, the outer part which is at a distance of about one light year (63,2 thousand astronomical units) from the star. It is believed that the cloud is a source of long-period comets and is a remnant of the protoplanetary disk.