Meet the Oort cloud, an invisible spherical shell of trillions of icy comets! | Interstellar Traveller

In the far reaches of our solar system lies a fascinating region where billions of comets orbit. Oort cloud is this week’s Museum of Science, Boston and Dictionary.com #ScienceWordOfTheWeek! Presented by Maynard Okereke, better known as Hip Hop Science M.D. #vocabulary #dictionary #wordoftheday #wordnerd #sciencefacts #astronomy #oortcloud #janoort #solarsystem #comet #universe | Museum of Science, Boston

The Oort Cloud is a vast, distant reservoir of icy bodies, theorized to be a giant spherical shell surrounding our solar system. Located far beyond the orbit of Neptune, it stretches out thousands of times farther than the Sun's influence. This frigid cloud is considered the source of most long-period comets, those that take hundreds or even thousands of years to loop around the Sun. Its existence is based on the observed numbers of these long-period comets, and scientists estimate it could cont