Oort Cloud

The Oort cloud is an immense spherical cloud surrounding the planetary system and extending approximately 3 light years, about 30 trillion kilometers from the Sun. This vast distance is considered the edge of the Sun's orb of physical, gravitational, or dynamical influence. Within the cloud, comets are typically tens of millions of kilometers apart. They are weakly bound to the sun, and passing stars and other forces can readily change their orbits, sending them into the inner solar system or out to interstellar space. This is especially true of comets on the outer edges of the Oort cloud. The structure of the cloud consist of a relatively dense core that lies near the ecliptic plane and gradually replenishes the outer boundaries, creating a steady state. One sixth of an estimated six trillion icy objects or comets are in the outer region with the remainder in the relatively dense core.

Right after the Ascent Terrans engaged in an intensive survey of their own solar system, including the Kupier Belt and the Oort Cloud and thanks to the new technologies, every planet, moon and large asteroid was not only catalogued and measured but in many cases settled and utilized. While large colonist groups during the Second Exodus went to other planets, small groups, families and small companies spread thruought the Solar system.

The first humans making their home in the enormous region called the Oort Cloud were miners, prospecting for ice, minerals and heavy elements. Humanity under the government of United Earth grew in leaps and bounds and was hungry for materials and Terran factories all over the solar system had an insatiable hunger for more raw materials.Fortunes were to be had to anyone willing to work for it.

Today there are 32,000 large Trans Neptunian Objects  (Sizes between 200 and 1600 km) that have permanent settlements. The largest is on Sedna ( 90377 Sedna ) a 1,500 asteroid made mostly of ice and rock, 193,000 inhabitants made their permanent home on Sedna.

Over 33 million beings (almost exclusively humans) are spread across this enormous cloud and consider themselves Teenos (TNOs)

Sedna is the seat of the Oort Cloud region management government center and the Teenos elect their own assembly representative.

1500 of the larger TNO Objects in the Oort Cloud are utilized as space forts for the Sol System Defense Force. Most of these forts (nicknamed Potato Forts ) are manned by reservists and volunteers of the Sol National Guard.

Travel and traffic from and to the Oort Cloud is managed and directed from the TNO Hub based on Neptune moon Triton. Besides shuttle service Sedna is serviced by Space Bus.

Main Exports: Minerals, Water ice, Astro-shrooms , Produce

Main Import: Food products, Luxury goods, mining equipment

 Oort Cloud – Astronomical Knowledge and Data

he Oort cloud ({C}{C}{C} /ˈɔrt/; alternatively the Öpik–Oort cloud IPA: [ˈøpik]) is a hypothesized spherical cloud of comets which may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun.[a][1] This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The Kuiper belt andscattered disc, the other two reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects, are less than one thousandth the Oort cloud's distance. The outer extent of the Oort cloud defines the gravitational boundary of our Solar System.[2]

The Oort cloud is thought to comprise two separate regions: a spherical outer Oort cloud and a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud, or Hills cloud. Objects in the Oort cloud are largely composed of ices, such as water, ammonia, and methane. Astronomers believe that the matter composing the Oort cloud formed closer to the Sun and was scattered far out into space by the gravitational effects of the giant planets early in the Solar System's evolution.[1]

<p style="margin-top:4.8pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;margin-left: 0in;line-height:18.0pt">Although no confirmed direct observations of the Oort cloud have been made, astronomers believe that it is the source of all long-period and Halley-type cometsentering the inner Solar System and many of the Centaurs and Jupiter-family comets as well.<sup id="cite_ref-emel2007_2-0">[3] The outer Oort cloud is only loosely bound to the Solar System, and thus is easily affected by the gravitational pull both of passing stars and of the Milky WayGalaxy itself. These forces occasionally dislodge comets from their orbits within the cloud and send them towards the inner Solar System.<sup id="cite_ref-Morbidelli2006_0-2">[1] Based on their orbits, most of the short-period comets may come from the scattered disc, but some may still have originated from the Oort cloud.<sup id="cite_ref-Morbidelli2006_0-3">[1][3] Although the Kuiper belt and the farther scattered disc have been observed and mapped, only four currently known trans-Neptunian objects—90377 Sedna, 2000 CR105, 2006 SQ372, and2008 KV42—are considered possible members of the inner Oort cloud.<sup id="cite_ref-morbidelli04_3-0">[4][5

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