What is the difference?

Question

What is the difference between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud? Are they not the same? Where do comets come from? Oort Cloud or Kuiper Belt?

Answer 1

Comets come from the Oort cloud, not the kuiper belt.

For more info on the differences between the two, read below.

Answer 2

No they are not. Jan OOrt theorized the existence of the OOrt cloud at a distance much farther out in space then Kuiper belt. Kuiper belt is snowy object orbiting the sun past Neptune. Oort cloud is past Pluto and about 30 trillion miles from the sun. Far beyond Kuiper belt. OOrt cloud has mainly comets. Kuiper belt has comets too yet the belief is the Ooort has more comets than kuiper belt.

Answer 3

From nineplanets.org
In 1950 Jan Oort noticed that

1. no comet has been observed with an orbit that indicates that it came from interstellar space,
2. there is a strong tendency for aphelia of long period comet orbits to lie at a distance of about 50,000 AU, and
3. there is no preferential direction from which comets come.

From this he proposed that comets reside in a vast cloud at the outer reaches of the solar system. This has come to be known as the Oort Cloud. The statistics imply that it may contain as many as a trillion (1e12) comets. Unfortunately, since the individual comets are so small and at such large distances, we have no direct evidence about the Oort Cloud.

The Oort Cloud may account for a significant fraction of the mass of the solar system, perhaps as much or even more than Jupiter. (This is highly speculative, however; we don't know how many comets there are out there nor how big they are.)

In 2004, the discovery of an object known as 2003 VB12 "Sedna" was announced. Its orbit is intermediate between the Kuiper Belt and what was previously thought to be the inner part of the Oort Cloud. Perhaps this object is the first of a new class of "inner Oort Cloud" objects.

The Kuiper Belt is a disk-shaped region past the orbit of Neptune extending roughly from 30 to 50 AU from the Sun containing many small icy bodies. It is now considered to be the source of the short-period comets.

Occasionally the orbit of a Kuiper Belt object will be disturbed by the interactions of the giant planets in such a way as to cause the object to cross the orbit of Neptune. It will then very likely have a close encounter with Neptune sending it out of the solar system or into an orbit crossing those of the other giant planets or even into the inner solar system.

;-D Check this out. It is very interesting: http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Animations/Animations.html

Answer 4

Comets come from BOTH the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. However, there is a difference in the comet and which source it comes from -- Kuiper Belt comets are 'short-period' comets. This means that they orbit the sun at least once in no more than 200 years. Halley's Comet is a short-period comet (76 year cycle). Oort Cloud comets are 'long-period' comets with periods of greater than 200 years. Comet Kohoutek is a long-period comet with a period of 75,000 years.

Answer 5

Bah what bullshit.

They come from both.
Kuiper belt objects are closer in and are short period comets that we are more familar with.
The Oort cloud is further out and is the birthplace of long period comets. It probably has earlier origins as well.