2006 SQ372 may be from the Oort cloud

The other day I wrote about an interesting cometary like object presently out near Neptune - now it appears it may be an Oort cloud object. The Oort cloud is a frigid area on the outermost limits of our solar system. This cloud is a proposed reservoir of long-period comets — those that visit the inner solar system no more than once every 200 years. IT was first hypothesized to exist back in 1950.

“We believe SQ372 is the first detected member of a comet population in the outer solar system that comes from the, up-until-now, unobserved inner Oort Cloud,” says codiscoverer Nathan Kaib of the University of Washington in Seattle. “Comets like SQ372 have the potential to tell us what the entire Oort Cloud looks like, which will test theoretical models of the cloud's formation as well as provide clues about the environment that the solar system first formed in.” Kaib's team reported the findings August 18 in Chicago at a meeting on the latest findings from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

They suggest that this little comet may be on its return leg of a 22500 year journey. it's orbit is highly elongated and will take it back to a region about 240 billions kilometres from the Sun.

Even at its farthest point from the sun, 2006 SQ372 is only a tenth as far as the main part of the proposed Oort Cloud.

A much larger, Pluto-sized object called Sedna, codiscovered by Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in 2003, might also be a remote refugee from the inner Oort Cloud, Becker and Kaib suggest. Sedna doesn’t venture nearly as far out as 2006 SQ372 does, but it also doesn’t come as close to the sun, likely preserving more of the materials it acquired from the solar system’s outer reaches.

But of course these are all hypothesis but quite excitign if the theorectical models are true - 2006 SQ372 will have its orbit perturned by the gravitational pull of both Uranus and Neptune - but I guess we won't need to worry about how accurate our theories are as to its return in 22500 years!