NASA supercomputer reveals mysterious nearby cloud that could be a meteorite cradle

The study of the universe is a subject that never ceases to amaze the scientific community. If being able to know what is beyond our atmosphere has been something that has always been part of space research, discovering new stars or developing theories that had not taken place before, are a help when studying outer space

Now NASA has taken a step further in the study of space by reporting that the Oort Cloud, a mysterious layer of icy objects at the edge of our solar system, could have spiral arms, making it look like a miniature galaxy. In fact, new research by NASA astrophysicists suggests that this new model suggests an internal structure of the Oort Cloud that may resemble a spiral disk, as published in the study released on February 16.

The Oort Cloud, remnants of other planets

It should be noted that this so-called Oort cloud is nothing more than unused remnants of the largest planets in the Solar System, such as Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus and Saturn, which were left orbiting after their formation, more than 4.6 billion years ago. In fact, some of these objects are so large that they could be considered small planets in their own right.

Now, after this new data, it can be said that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft will not reach the Oort Cloud for another 300 years and will not exit for another 300,000 years. NASA experts, to explain this phenomenon, used information from the orbits of comets and the gravitational forces from inside and outside our solar system to build a model of the structure of the Oort Cloud.

It was when NASA scientists fed all this data into the Pleiades supercomputer that they were able to obtain a structure of the inner part of the cloud that resembles the spiral of the Milky Way. According to the model, the arms of this inner Oort cloud extend 15,000 light-years from end to end.