Friday, August 12, 2011

Most bodies orbit the sun in the same plane, but the Oort cloud is apparently spherical. Is that right? Why?

Presumably, if the Oort cloud is spherical, the material within it must be orbiting the sun in every possible orientation. How did it get this way, when everything else in the solar system orbits roughly in the plane of the ecliptic? Why isn't the Oort cloud a torus rather than a sphere?

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