Discovery in the Solar System: Spiral structure found in the Oort Cloud

In the study conducted by the team led by astronomer David Nesvorny from the Southwest Research Institute in the USA, the 4.6 billion-year evolution of the Solar System was simulated using NASA's Pleiades Supercomputer.

Scientists have discovered a hitherto unknown spiral structure in the Oort Cloud. A new computer simulation shows that the Milky Way's gravitational pull creates a giant spiral in the Oort Cloud's interior.

The Oort Cloud is known as the most distant region of the Solar System and consists of icy rocks extending up to 100 thousand astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. For many years, scientists thought that the outer part of the Oort Cloud was spherical and the inner part was ring-shaped. However, new simulations have shown that this inner structure is actually spiral-shaped.

According to the study, the gravitational forces of the Milky Way create a spiral structure with a diameter of 15 thousand AU in the inner part of the Oort Cloud. This structure emerged in the early periods of the Solar System and has survived to the present day. Scientists state that this new discovery provides important clues about the formation and evolution of the Oort Cloud.

This discovery is considered a big step towards solving the unknowns about the formation process of the Solar System.