What are the Oort cloud and Kuiper Belt?
The Kuiper belt is a disk shaped region of icy debris about 30-50 AU from the Sun, which is outside the orbit of Neptune. It is similar in organization to the asteroid belt although it is far larger being 20 times as wide and 20-200 times as massive. Although similar in organization, the make up of the individual bodies is markedly different. The asteroid belt is similar to terrestrial planets being made mostly of rock and metal while the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) share a similarity with the Jovian planets being made principally of frozen volatiles such as methane, ammonia, and water. The Kuiper belt is also the home of the dwarf planets Pluto, Haumea, and Makemake. Another organized structure of astronomical bodies has been theorized to exist called the Oort cloud, named for Jan Oort who originally theorized its existence in 1950. Light is so scarce in the far reaches of the proposed solar system that it is extremely difficult to identify the existence the cloud. The main evidence fo
