In the study conducted by the team led by the celestial scientist David Nesvorny from the Southwest Research Institute in the United States, the 4.6 billion -year -old evolution of the Solar System was simulated by using NASA’s Pleiades super computer. Scientists have discovered an unknown spiral structure in the Oort Cloud. A new computer simulation showed that a giant spiral was formed in the interior of the Oort Cloud with the effect of the Milky Way.
The Oort cloud is known as the farthest region of the Solar System and consists of icy rocks extending from the Sun to 100,000 astronomical units (AU). Scientists have thought that the outer part of the Oort Cloud for many years was a global structure and the interior was in the form of a ring. However, the new simulations revealed that this internal structure is actually spiral.
According to the study, the mass gravitational forces of the Milky Way constitute a 15,000 AU spiral structure in the interior of the Oort Cloud. This structure has emerged in the early stages of the Solar System and has maintained its existence until today. Scientists say that this new discovery offers important clues about the formation and evolution of the Oort Cloud.
This discovery is considered a big step taken to solve the unknowns about the formation process of the Solar System.
