Oort Cloud, Be Proud!

If you have ever wondered what's outside our inner solar system, I found a blog post with a poem, which sums it up very nicely over at The Amateur Scientist...I like this :-)

"Oort Cloud, Be Proud!" by Richard Peacock

Oort cloud, be proud
Of your cosmic contributions!
Hurling comets at our sun,
There to meet forlorn conclusions.

Comprised of chunks of rock and ice,
A swarm of messy debris
At least 2,000 AU's away,
Too far for us to see.

As our solar system moves through space,
You are perturbed by other stars'
Gravitational pulls and tugs,
Though they are very far.



And these little gravitational bumps
Dislodge the chunks from their positions,
And start them creeping towards the sun
On ten-thousand year long missions.

Though your total mass is somewhat small,
(Only five times the mass of Earth)
Your age is probably the same as ours:
5 billion years since your cosmic birth.

It's likely you're the one to blame
For our past global extinctions,
Brought on by comets from the sky
From your outer-solar secretions.



But without extinctions we would not have
Such diversity of life,
Caused by dying species leaving
Open niches full and rife.

New species then evolve
To fill the open niche,
Finding new requirements
That they then must adapt to meet.

So be proud, Oort cloud,
Of your determination and resolve,
For without your planet-killing-comets,
We might never have evolved.