The Oort cloud, is an almost sphericle collection of comets, preserved in a deep freeze. The existence of this spehere was proposed by Dutch astronomer, Jan H. Oort. With a diameter of about 100,000 AUs (one AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun ~150 million kilometers), several hundred billion of these ancient comets sleep. Oort conceived that the random gravitational jostling of star passing nearby knocks some of the outer comets, and gradually deflects their paths to dip towards the Sun. However, Oort's hypothesis could not explain short-period comets, which are now believed to come from the Kuiper Belt.
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