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The scattered disk isn’t at the edge of the solar system. Not by a
long shot. That honor goes to the Oort cloud. Its outer edge is
at least ten thousand times farther from the Sun than Neptune.
The Oort cloud is huge. And it may contain as many as
2 trillion icy objects. Yup, that’s right, 2 TRILLION. The largest
Oort cloud object is called Sedna. It takes 12,050 years to orbit
the Sun.
Like the icy objects
in the scattered disk,
objects in the Oort
cloud can become
comets. Scientists
think any comet that
takes more than 200
years to orbit the Sun
comes from the Oort
cloud.
On the Edge
